Organize 365® Podcast

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU learn the skill of organization, too!

In this episode, I introduce you to Pamela A. to discuss her organizing journey and transformation. Pamela spent many years looking for her solutions to get herself and her home organized. With two small boys and a husband, she was on an endless search for organizing solutions. 

She found the Organize 365® Podcast through a Google search. She was hooked and binged all the old episodes while driving to and from work. That’s SO many episodes. If you are also new around here - I highly recommend using our Organize 365® Podcast Playlists to find what you’re looking for.

Flash forward to today - Pamela’s boys are now 27 and 33 years old. Pamela works full-time at a hospital. She has been living in the same house for the past 29 years (similar to me). There are upsides and downsides of staying in the same house for so long. When you move, it forces you to make decisions about your stuff. Pamela and I discuss that over the years she has accumulated a lot of stuff - that’s not hers. 

Pamela’s house is home to all her sons’ stuff, her grandparents’ stuff and now her own mother’s belongings as well. It’s a lot. Pamela watched the video I made where I show the process of organizing a storage room and she said she’s going to need a dumpster like we used in this video. Watch it for free.

Listen in to this interview to hear our in-depth conversation about:

  • Why do we keep all of this stuff?
  • How much should we realistically be keeping of things like children’s artwork, books, American Girls, Legos, etc?
  • How to organize a storage room and how long will it stay organized?
  • Why we use our basements and storage rooms for delayed decision making and how to avoid this in the future.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Transformation_with_Pamela_A.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Proactive versus Reactive

Listen in to how I map out someone going from a completely reactive life to a proactive one.

Since I don’t have a lot of margin in my life right now, there are things I used to do regularly that I’m unable to do. I now have a 2-week break from school and I will be sharing how I plan to continue my proactive living without the additional margin in my life.

At first I thought I would take the additional time off from school and put it to working more, but SURPRISE, I have decided to take some additional time off from work to do more personal and family related things. I want to have the flexibility to do whatever my energy is in allowing myself the freedom to do all these things in whatever order and be even better prepared for my next school semester.

Here are some of the things I plan to take care of during my break:

  • Reorganize the storage rooms
  • Clean out the family room and toys
  • Move into outside living
  • Personal organizing - closet, bathroom, purse, car, supplements, and personal care
  • Stock the house for the next 4 months
  • Deep cleaning
  • Catching up on podcasts
  • Listen to audiobooks
  • Sunday Basket® deep dive
  • Binder updates
  • Photo printing
  • Puzzles and TV watching with Greg
  • Fun family outings

I am in a season where I am running really fast and I love it! What season are you in and how are you planning for these areas of your life?

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Pursuing_a_PhD_14_-_Reclaiming_My_Home_Plans_During_Break.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

This episode answers a question I get a lot. How do you know when you are organized? What does it mean to be fully organized? Does anyone ever feel finished? Is there an organization finish line?

Let’s get into it! 

First, you’re going to want to follow along with the Organize 365® Research - get a FREE copy of our newly released research magazine here.

Our most recent research study aimed to answer these questions about what it means to be organized and where the finish line might be. In order to do this, we broke organization up into the four categories we defined - personal, storage, family & communal spaces and paper. This allowed us to zero in on different areas and give people an opportunity to rank if they felt organized in any of these areas of their lives. 

  • 15% of respondents felt they were personally organized
  • 14% of respondents felt that their storage rooms were organized
  • 18% of respondents felt that their paper was organized
  • 13% of respondents felt that their family & communal spaces were organized

This is a huge problem because our research has already revealed that 87% of Americans believe organization is a learnable skill. So the majority of people believe this to be learnable, but yet they have not achieved it. My concern is that people start to think they are the problem. When in fact, the real problem is that we don’t have a good way to learn the skill of organization or know when you’ve accomplished it. 

Listen in to hear more about how Swiss Cheese Organizing is only exacerbating the problem. Which leads to one of the most important points of this podcast:

The order in which you attack organizing your home is MORE important than the amount you get done in any one area.

Learning to be organized and becoming organized is a commitment. Just like any other new skill or lifestyle choice you may make - getting healthier, getting out of debt, getting a degree. It’s going to take time. Probably eighteen months to three years. Once you understand that it is going to take time - there’s a relief in that. A release of pressure. Let go of the idea that you can get this done in a weekend. That if you don’t instantly start feeling and operating more organized, you’ve failed. You cannot get a transformation overnight or in the nooks and crannies of your everyday life. This is a commitment.

But here’s the really important thing to remember - in three of the four areas of organization we have defined (personal, storage and paper), once you get these areas organized they will stay organized for a long time. Today’s episode includes approximate timelines for each area and tips for maintaining them once they are organized.

There is so much organization goodness in this podcast and I want you to take from this that there is no one finish line for organization. There really are four finish lines, but also we are going for excellence not perfection. Create your own benchmarks and allow yourself the time you need to make this transformation and learn this skill.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: 533_-_Is_There_an_Organization_Finish_Line_.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU learn the skill of organization, too!

Today I’m interviewing Lindsey S. She’s a high school special education teacher that found me through my podcast with Angela Watson. What’s so interesting about this interview is that Lindsey S. was already living an organized life when she found Organize 365®. But her life was speeding up and she had the wherewithal to know she had to implement some new organizational systems and skills if she was going to keep up.

She lives with her husband, twin 5 year old daughters, and 9 year old daughter. Lindsey holds nothing back in the hopes that her story will help others. One of her daughters has a learning disability and one has autism. Her openness in sharing her journey advocating for her children is admirable. Even as a special education teacher of 12 years (knowing the ins and outs of the systems in place), she still needed a system for organizing and presenting her documentation for each of her daughters. She uses the Warrior MAMA Binder! 

We talk about parent intuition and observation which is something I’ve always known (anecdotally) is a thing. But I’m learning more and more about it in my PhD program. Lindsey has thoughts on this also!

Switching topics to how Lindsey organizes herself and her household - you have to hear how Lindsey is “chunking” out her Sunday Basket® time! If you are in a busy season of life and can’t seem to find the time to do your Sunday Basket®, this podcast is for you! 

I am floored to find out Lindsey also has Sunday Baskets® for each of her girls! She walks me through how these are set up and it is absolutely genius! She gave me some ideas to implement in my own life with my daughter.

Then, she walks us through her Friday Workbox® which has been amazing for her since she has so much administrative work that she’s been able to make visible (and pretty) with a Friday Workbox®. The Friday Workbox® helps her easily glide through her day. It’s given her more capacity and time.

How is Lindsey using the time she’s unlocked through implementing Organize 365® systems and courses? Listen in to find out!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Transformation_with_Lindsay_S..mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

We are nearing the end of my first trimester and I am now in the mindset to be successful in this 4 year journey. In this podcast, I’m talking to you about planning.

Processing this journey, I am a whole to part learner, looking at the end of the journey to understand what I will need to move through this journey. I am spending time attending webinars and meetings finding out more about the field I am studying and what else I may want to focus on to further the impact I could have.

Once you make a decision, it is not set in stone; you can re-decide, modify, and make changes. As I move forward, I will continue to re-evaluate and plan my PhD experience.

Planning for me is the key to not slip back into a reactive life, but to continually be looking at how I am using my days, weeks, months, trimesters, and the next 4 years, for the most impact possible; for myself personally, for my company, and for the people I am doing the research for.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Pursuing_a_PhD_13_Plan_with_the_end_in_mind.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

I used to think that once my kids got older that summer wouldn’t be so much of a challenge. Wrong. Adults get summers, too. 

Have you heard motivation coaches say “you only have so many summers left” OR “you only have so many summers left with your kids?” It may sound cliche, but it’s true! When you put it in this context, it becomes very clear that you should absolutely prioritize your summer experiences!

In today’s podcast, I have some questions for you about your summer plans! We break it all down and I’m giving you my tips for planning your summer! It can be whatever you want it to be!

Questions to ask yourself:

  • What are your summer traditions?
  • When you think about summer, what do you think about?
  • What are things you do in the summer season exclusively?
  • What have you done in the past that you want to repeat this summer?
  • What is something new you want to do this summer?
  • Are there any big milestones or birthdays or events that will be happening over summer?

You MUST plan your seasons. There are natural points throughout the year to do this. Listen to this podcast about what I call Golden Windows to learn more.

Here’s why this is important - it’s natural to be reactive at home. The Productive Home Solution™ Planning Day trains you how to plan and proactively prepare for all the foreseeable stuff. It’s not enough to just think about or want it - you have to make a plan for it or it won’t happen.

Planning Day helps you understand the cycles and seasons. You learn to create plans for how you will use your home, what your schedule and capacity will look like during that season and how to tap into energy for optimum success.

Planning Day is part of the Organize 365® courses that make the invisible work visible so you aren’t in reactive mode and you can unlock your time for yourself, your family and community!

What do you want your summer to look like? Join me on Planning Day and let’s put thought and planning into making your summer amazing. It’s your turn to plan and I’m so excited to be your teacher!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: 532_-_How_to_Organize_in_the_Summer_Months_1.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU learn the skill of organization, too!

You are in for a treat because in this episode we meet Deanne. She found Organize 365® through the book “How ADHD Affects Home Organization.” She’s a mental health professional who was seeking resources for her clients, but also found the book to be helpful for her and she wanted to learn more about functional organization!

Deanne lives with her husband, her 15 year old son and an 18 year old exchange student from Norway! She also has two older sons that have launched. 

Since Deanne is a mental health professional, we jump right into the connection between organization and mental health. How does organization impact our mental health? We speak anecdotally about the physiological and emotional distress that organization can cause.

Deanne started her own functional organizing journey with The Sunday Basket®. It’s a great place to start! She now has a Sunday Basket® she manages on her mom’s behalf, a Friday Workbox® for her business and has gotten her oldest son using his own Sunday Basket®.

Deanne plays many roles in life - she is a wife, mother, business owner, caregiver for her mother and I’m sure many other things. We get into what functional organization and systems like The Paper Solution® Binders can do for you as you are balancing these roles and having to advocate for others. 

As Deanne took on caregiving for her mom, she became the power of healthcare and power of attorney. She set up a Sunday Basket® for her and had to sort through a room’s worth of paper on her mom’s behalf. She has made it a point to set up her own binders. We discuss how doing our binders is (1) a gift we give to those that will one day have to advocate for us or settle our estates and (2) a project that doesn’t need to be perfect. If you are using The Paper Solution® Binders and they are at 80%, that is absolutely an A+ and will save you and your family time in the future.

We discuss the process of implementing the Sunday Basket® and our learning styles. How did you implement your Sunday Basket®? Did you do it all at once or one step at a time? Deanne waited until she had a big chunk of time and could get it all set up the way she wanted. 

She’s now well on her way. This interview covers so many topics, tips and positive organizing affirmations!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Transformation_with_Deanne_W..mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Why is it that when we decide to undertake something that’s going to make a difference in our lives, we still try to cut corners?

When I decided to go back to school in pursuit of a PhD, my mindset was initially to make the supplies and things I already had work for my school venture. But when I’ve needed something, I’ve found it’s just better to go ahead and get it. Some of these supplies help me move forward faster, be more productive and/or just be able to get my assignments and reading done in different places.

Do you have the supplies or tools you need where you need them? It makes all the difference. Listen to my story about scissors to find out why.

Here are some of my favorite supplies mentioned in today’s podcast:

Don’t live in frustration over not having what you need where you need it. The time and sanity savings will offset the investment.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Pursuing_a_PhD_12-_Get_Duplicate_Supplies.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

In today’s podcast, we will discuss how you can get your home organized when you are never home.

There are different seasons in our lives in which we will need to change our organization.

How does your home change for different seasons of your life?

The seasons I’ve identified that require the most functional organizing changes are:

There will be seasons of life when you will not be home much. 

When I started podcasting in 2012, I was going through a season of life where I was never home. My children were in two different schools that both required me to drive for hours a day. 

Looking back now, I can safely say it’s a season. So if you are in a season where you are never home, just know that this is a season. Some seasons feel never ending, but all of these seasons do end. I encourage you to take from these seasons the best that they have to offer knowing that one day you will be on the other side.

Why do we want to get our home organized when we are never home anyway? Organizing gives us a sense of control. In a season where you are already pressed for time and feeling a loss of control, you may be wanting to feel organized, proactive and productive when you are at home.

Where to begin?

At Organize 365®, we’ve identified four areas in every home that need to be organized in different ways and at different times and intervals. These are personal, family and communal, storage and paper. During a season where you aren’t home very much, I’m going to recommend you focus on personal organization.

Start with your car. I’ve always defined personal organization as your closet, bathroom, bedroom and car! You need to think about your car completely differently during this season. It’s now an extension of your home. 

In 2012, I turned my car into my portable house! The trunk was my “car closet” and the front area was my personal cockpit. I set up my car to serve my changing needs.

Your secondary focus should be just your personal spaces (as time permits at home). Focus on your bathroom, closet and your side of the bedroom. Do quick tasks that you can complete in 15-20 minutes.

Write everything down. If you are away from home as you are listening to this podcast, something you can start doing today, from anywhere, is to start writing everything down. Everywhere you have a thought, you should have a notepad to write it down. 

Take your Sunday Basket® with you. You need your Sunday Basket® more than ever during this season, but you may want your portable Sunday Basket® to be your primary Sunday Basket®. When you are out and about throughout the day, you will get 15 minute breaks in the action. Look at your portable Sunday Basket® and think “what’s one thing I can get done in this 15 minute pocket of time?” I processed through my Sunday Basket® in waiting rooms, in my car while waiting for my kids and so many other places. 

It won’t be perfect. Focus on the moments. Build the future life and future person as you go. Support yourself along the way with personal organization that works for you. And bring your Sunday Basket® along for the ride.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: 531-Howdoyouorgnaizeahomewhenyouareneverhome.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU learn the skill of organization, too!

Meet Marie. This podcast has been a long time in the making. Marie started listening to the Organize 365® podcast back in 2015! She’s had all the versions of The Sunday Basket®. 

Marie lives with her husband of 23 years, 18 year old daughter and 15 year old twin daughters. She also has a 20 year old son who lives in an apartment nearby.

Marie is experiencing the teenage years with her children and is wondering why she still doesn’t feel as organized as she would like and where all of her time is going.

This is an all too common theme. I’ve seen it time and time again. You think because your kids are now teenagers that you should be organized. Your kids are much more independent than they were so surely you should be getting your time back.

Not so fast. This is a transitional time period where your kids may act and speak as though they are independent - they have independent thoughts, make decisions and it’s a really fun season of parenting. But you are still very much in active parenting. 

Whenever you’re in a transitional period of time, there’s a push and pull between the now and the soon-to-be. You are still very much in the current season, but starting to wonder what you are going to do next and wanting to get into the next season. You’re in the inbetween. Embrace it. What’s one more experience you want to have during this season? What’s one more memory you want to make?

If you’ve ever wanted to hear what goes on during a virtual organizing session - this is it! This interview quickly turns into a session similar to what I used to have with my clients when I did professional organizing. 

Want to try it for yourself? Ask yourself:

  • What lights you up?

  • What don’t you like to do?

  • What are your family/household members into?

  • How organized do you want to be?

  • What really needs to happen in the next 12-18 months or in the season you’re in?

  • When you think about having your home organized, what does that look like for you?

  • Have you implemented The Sunday Basket® and how is that working for you?

Tune in as we also discuss what it truly means to save five hours with The Sunday Basket® and leadership versus management!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Transformation_with_Marie_F..mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

When someone tells you what to do and they have experience - you should probably listen to them.

I was told by someone in the know to get my eyes checked before I started my PhD. I didn’t. I felt confident that my over-the-counter readers were just fine. Well, here I am in Week 11 with new glasses! 

In this episode, I share two things I learned this week through my PhD journey:

  1. You need to have the right tools when you are doing anything. A PhD is so reading intensive that you do need to get your eyes checked! 

  2. Speed reading allows you to take in a lot of information, but details matter in the PhD program. I started using a ruler to read and highlight!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Pursuing_a_PhD_11-_Speed_Reading__Getting_Glasses.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

This podcast episode will give you tactical and functional organizing tips for multigenerational living. If you are in a multigenerational home or considering this option - this is for you!

Multigenerational living is near and dear to my heart these days. I am cherishing this life phase that I’m currently in - sharing my home with Abby (my daughter) and Grayson (my grandson). I know many members of the Organize 365® team and community are also living in multi-generational homes. 

I realize that there are different circumstances that may lead you to be in a multigenerational home. The three main situations that I’ve seen for multigenerational living are:

  1. Caregiving. If you are currently living the “sandwich” generation lifestyle - taking care of your parents while also trying to keep up with your adult children - I have a BIG HUG for you! Being a caregiver can be extremely isolating. I’ve been there and it can be a long road. 

  2. Consciously merging households. This seems to be a more recent phenomenon (in the United States at least). Families consciously decide to live together because they enjoy each other, it makes economic sense and they can share in the work and experience running the household together.

  3. Life circumstances. Sometimes it’s not a conscious decision but life circumstances create a situation where multigenerational living is necessary.

Regardless of how you ended up in a multigenerational home, here are my top organizational tips for making the most of the situation:

  • Be purposeful about transitioning the home to support a multigenerational home.

  • Ensure that everyone (INCLUDING YOU) have your own space. Everyone needs their own space. In my home, this means that Abby and Grayson have the basement apartment to themselves. They get to decide what they want down there, what it looks like and they are responsible for everything in this space. I also have my own spaces in the house that are just mine.

  • Create rules for communal spaces, but be willing to renegotiate and evolve those rules as the situation changes. For example, the communal spaces in our home are the living room, kitchen, laundry room and garage. These areas get to be cleaned and organized to my standards. There are rules for how we all operate and take care of these areas.

  • Laundry Days - This one has been great in our household. We have designated laundry days to ensure that we can get laundry done for ourselves on the days that our most convenient for all of us in the household.

  • Don’t feel guilty to say what you want in terms of the communal spaces.

  • Organizing the kitchen and food in a multigenerational home - start by considering the stages of life each of you are in. In my household we have the toddler phase, Greg and I are working away from home and Abby is a stay at home mom. Our kitchen is supporting three very different phases of life. We have created dedicated space for everyone’s food and Grayson’s adorable toddler eating utensils, plates and sippy cups.

How I’ve maintained my cleanliness standards in communal spaces:

  • Baby Gates - Living Room, Dining Room and Laundry - Grayson doesn’t go in those areas so they stay picked up.

  • Weekly Cleaning - We have a weekly cleaner come and every Thursday we know the house is being cleaned and everything needs to be picked up.

  • Minimalized toys in the family room - Constantly decluttering and rotating the toys in the family room - not minimalist but definitely minimized.

When you live in a multigenerational home, there will be some frustrations. If you are feeling frustrated (and I’ve been there), try to do a mindset swap and remember the many blessings that come with this experience. 

Your home needs to be organized differently and you need to establish different rules for yourself for all the phases of life you go through and different people or peoples living in your home with you.

Top 2 takeaways for living in a multigenerational home:

  1. Pick your battles.

  2. Create rules.

See the episode resources below for your supply list to help keep each member of the family and the entire household running smoothly. You’ll be sharing a lot, but you don’t need to share your own brain!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: 530_-What_Does_Organization_Look_Like_in_a_Multigenerational_Home_.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU learn the skill of organization, too!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Christine M. She lives with her husband and well loved cat in Ontario, Canada! When Christine M. experienced three moves in a short period of time, she learned the skill of organization through Organize 365®.

Christine is a former teacher turned grad student so we had a lot to talk about. Christine found her way to Organize 365® through my friend and fellow podcaster, Angela Watson. She was going through teacher burn-out, something we have been hearing all about. I cannot tell you enough how much I appreciate teachers. If you are a teacher, this podcast is a hug from me to you - thank you for all that you do! 

Christine’s interest in Organize 365® started through her Teacher Friday Workbox® which is now the Education Friday Workbox®. She wanted to implement systems into her teacher role to help her be more productive and purposeful with her time.

Her organizational journey went into overdrive when she found that she and her husband would be moving across Canada to Ontario. She utilized Organize 365® Ten Steps to an Organized Move (which is available inside The Productive Home Solution™) to pull off the most organized move imaginable. Getting organized BEFORE you move is key.

In the years that followed her move, she transformed into an even more organized person. We discuss the key principles and learning that she did to fully transform herself into a positive, productive and proactive person. She loves the idea that items in her home are auditioning for their place. 

Listen in to hear all about her journey and how she is now using her Education Friday Workbox® to organize her grad school journey! I love to hear how the Organize 365® products and courses evolve with your life.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Transformation_with_Christine_M..mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

How can we make the invisible work visible? How can we streamline or eliminate it? How much time do you have for your organizational transformation at your current life stage? Where are you on your journey? What’s the next best step for you?

Did you know Organize 365® has an amazing (AND FREE) quiz to help figure out how much time you have and where you are in the organizing cycle?

Take the Organize 365® quiz to help you determine:

  • Your “why”

  • How much time you have to commit

  • Where you are in the organizing cycle (Decluttering, Organizing and Increasing Productivity)

I invite you to take the quiz and use the customized results to help you determine the next best step for the upcoming trimester. You can take this quiz as many times as you like throughout your journey! 

Episode Resources:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Take_the_Organize_365_Quiz.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

I gave myself the gift of a mid-semester review and reset my PhD organization. It was the BEST gift.

I’ve hit the halfway mark in my semester. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything and make sure I’m on target. 

Here’s how I hit the reset button:

  • Re-read the syllabus for each class (HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS)

  • Compiled and organized all my notes for all my classes into a notebook by class

  • Planned ahead for the second half of the semester by looking ahead and doing anything I could do to organize my remaining assignments and classes

Our brain’s desire organizational planning time. Are you giving yourself time to plan and organize your work, home and life?

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Pursuing_a_PhD_10_-_a_mid_semester_review_and_organization_session.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Have you ever thought about how much your home is a business? 

Our homes are businesses. The entire US economy runs on the economy of your house. If the American family is doing well, the American economy is doing well.

When I talk about our homes as businesses, I don’t mean that you should be just going through the motions and checking boxes or anything even similar to that. In this episode, I share how you can use tools and systems (similar to what you would do at work) to gain a bigger impact and less stress at home.

A business usually has a CEO and COO. Your home most likely does, too. Sometimes you may be acting as the CEO and COO, sometimes you may just have one of those roles.

The CEO creates the strategy of the company, manages the capacity and resources, and plans for execution. Some of the things you may do as the CEO of your home are:

  • During your weekly Sunday Basket® routine, you look at what constraints you have in the upcoming week, what needs to get done

  • Planning your week and trimester in advance

The COO plays a critical role in running the day-to-day actionables that will accomplish the strategy the CEO has created for the team. 

The key to success is that the CEO and COO are both operating proactively and strategically. Making choices about what to work on, how to spend time and money, and what experiences and impact they want to create within their household.

In this episode, I deep dive into how The Friday Workbox® operates for your business and apply this to how the Sunday Basket® helps you run the business of home and family. 

I’d love to hear your feedback on this one! Do you see the parallels between running your home as a business?

Come learn how to plan like the CEO of your home!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: 529_-_Your_home_is_a_business.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU learn the skill of organization, too!

Today I’m excited to talk with fellow podcaster, Sarah Hart-Unger.  Sarah hosts the podcast Best Laid Plans, co-hosts the podcast Best of Both Worlds with Laura Vanderkam, is the mother of three children, married to a surgeon, and works as pediatric endocrinologist! So, needless to say, she stays busy! Organization and planning are a big part of her ability to do so much and we will be talking about the systems she has in place.

First things first, we talk about parenting! Sarah is experiencing a golden window because her youngest child just turned 5! For parents of children younger than 5, things are just changing so frequently every 6-8 weeks that it is hard to catch your breath in terms of getting organized.

We discuss how when you go through different stages and phases of life, you learn how to use your organization and time management skills in different ways.

Sarah is a big believer in functional organization. It doesn’t have to be pretty, but it needs to work for you! She shares how she is ruthless about getting rid of things and enjoys knowing where things are. 

Organizing her time is one of her favorite things to do. Mine, too! We dig deep into how planning your home life by quarters just does not work. It creates weird cut-offs like July. Who wants to start a new plan in the middle of summer? You need to have your entire summer planned out. The quarters of the year aren’t actually new energies. The Organize 365® approach to planning is by trimesters.

Planning allows you to make room for your own explosive growth! We both discuss how during busy seasons of life, our respective calendars and planners bring us a sense of peace and allow us to have more capacity. Do you have a plan that you love to look at? That gives you peace, not stress? That creates calm in chaos? Do you have a plan for the upcoming trimester and summer season? 

Sarah also shares how she has organized her children. We discuss a very hot topic - how to organize kids’ artwork! Check out the episode resources if you want to share the Kids Movie Sarah references with your kids as well!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Transformation_with_Sarah_Hart-Unger.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

There is administration time related to getting your PhD.

The Sunday Basket® and the Business Friday Workbox® teaches you there are invisible tasks you do at home and work. Once these tasks are made visible, you can eliminate as many as possible. 

Mid-semester, I realized I need PhD administrative time. Listen in as I review what types of administrative tasks I have while working on my PhD.

  • Planning my work 

  • Organizing my email

  • Signing up for teacher office hours 

  • Cleaning up Zotero files

Next week, I will share with you how I took a pause and reoriented myself.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Pursuing_a_PhD_9-_Setting_Aside_PhD_Administrative_Time.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Are you playing Checkers or Chess? Of course, you are playing Checkers. We all are. But, some of us are playing (and winning) Chess, too!

In today’s episode, I breakdown how you can “play” the game of life better with an emphasis on strategy. 

As I breakdown the “game of life” in this episode, we discuss:

  • Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

  • Marie Kondo’s life with three kids

  • Generational norms

  • The strategy of living life with a planned approach

Which leads us to the free Organize 365® blitzes. These blitzes were designed to help you get ahead. They may seem like “small wins” but they have a huge impact on how we look at our time in a more strategic (chess-like) way. These blitzes teach us how to incorporate forward planning into our game of life.

In the next four months, you are going to experience Memorial Day, Mother’s Day, tax day and the summer season. These things are coming whether you plan ahead or not. But, if you do join our blitzes and planning day, you’ll be able to approach the next four months with a planned and strategic approach. This will allow you to enjoy summer experiences with your family, sign your kids up for their favorite camps, purchase plane tickets before they sell out and look forward to your summer. Playing Chess allows you to get out of the reactiveness of the Checkers game.

Organize 365® Planning Days allow you to do the mental work ahead of time so you can enjoy the upcoming season. I hope you’ll join me!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: 528_-_Do_You_Know_How_to_Play_the_Game_of_Life_.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU learn the skill of organization, too!

During this month we have been talking to women about how women in their 30s are getting it done. Stephanie represents women that are not working from home. She began her career as a corporate executive before she left to continue to grow the company she founded with her husband, Vince. She and Vince have 4 kids, 11, 9 (twins), and 6.

She worked from home for the last couple of years, but got physical space last Spring and she is back working in an office. She enjoyed her time working from home, but realized she needed more thinking and planning time and has since moved into a physical office space.

She moved to a condensed schedule, Monday to Thursday available for meetings and in the office with Fridays off, to give her the ability to have some parts of a stay-at-home mom. Never being able to fully work on just Austin Fowler, she has found time saving activities. Her time is very full with her own business and a family of 6 so it is important to her to plan and prepare for her weeks and weekends. She is very disciplined and uses her Sunday Basket® and Friday Workbox® to plan while using her bags to pack and prepare.

Listen in to find out what things work well for Stephanie and her family during this season of growing children and a growing business.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Transformation_with_Stephanie_Fowler.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Are we really talking about clothing again? What does this really have to do with getting a PhD anyway?!

Organization unlocks our time and productivity unlocks our capacity.

I’m using my PhD as the example for these stories, but everything I’m sharing with you is how I am taking past organizational strengths, learning, or habits that I have had or am developing now and how I’m refining those in order to get more time and have more capacity.

The way in which we free up our time in order to be able to do the next thing, that’s organization. As we organize, we create a habit. A habit is just doing the thing you’ve already organized without consciously thinking about it. In order to really get more time, you have to over analyze some basic habits to figure out if there is a more efficient way to do these things and somehow create this new habit and put it on autopilot so we don’t have to even think about it.

This brings us back to clothing!

Listen in as we talk about how creating a uniform for the different hats you wear will help you to transition into the role that you're playing and mentally enter into that space. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

 

Pursuing a PhD: Creating Multiple Uniforms For The Hats I Wear - Week 8

Direct download: Pursuing_a_PhD_8-_Creating_Multiple_Uniforms_For_The_Hats_I_Wear.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

There is no such thing as perfection.

There just isn’t. Don’t let social media fool you. What about those pictures you see as you're scrolling your phone? Those aren’t real. Perfection isn’t real. But how do we get our brain and subconscious mind to understand this? 

When you see me, you are getting the 100% real me. I don’t use filters. As a matter of fact, I don’t even know how to use filters. It’s important for me to show you the real me. What you see is what you get.

I am not a perfectionist. I am a woman of excellence. This episode is going to help you understand how you are also a person of excellence and what that means.

Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do..therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit.”

The habits taught through the Organize 365® systems and courses lead us to be people of excellence. These same habits help us free our brains and time to do what we are uniquely created to do.

Habits are so purposeful. Negative habits tend to happen naturally. But positive habits rarely happen naturally. I want you to think about your habits - are they helping you be a person of excellence? Are they allowing you the time you need to do what you are uniquely created to do?

I want you to choose a life of excellence over perfectionism. Don’t expect perfectionism from yourself or others. A person of excellence is able to focus on substance, richer conversations, better solutions and live a more productive life.

A word of the wise, choosing not to be a perfectionist is not an excuse to be lazy. You still need to strive for excellence. This will look different depending on your phase of life and priorities. 

I want to leave you with three things in this episode:

  1. Perfectionism is not a thing.

  2. Excellence is a great middle ground for you to strive for.

  3. You will never be done working on yourself, learning, growing and creating the person you want to be. It’s a journey.

As you think about your journey, I want you to also think about your home and the three seasons per year within your home. You need different things in those seasons. A person of excellence is continually improving and evolving the way they organize and use their home and time.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: 527_-_Excellence_vs_Perfection_in_Home_Management.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:00am EDT

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU learn the skill of organization, too!

Welcome back Andrea to the podcast. Andrea, 37, is married to her husband, age 41 and together they have 4 children, 2 girls and 2 boys ages 11, 8, 7, and 5. Listen in as we talk about how she stays organized in her 30’s with a young family.

Andrea discusses her focus of functional organizing for a family of six. We also get to hear how interesting her time and scheduling works, and what she does to make the different seasons of her life work within a schedule. 

We all know feeding a family can be challenging and the desire to make the right food choices is a priority. Andrea shows us her process of making food changes in her family when change doesn’t come easy for anyone.

Andrea mentions the quote “Build a life you don’t need to escape from” and how she and her family have built that life where she feels energized and isn’t looking for a vacation to bring her rest.  She doesn’t feel the need to take days off to recharge her batteries, because it seems to work itself into each and every day.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Tansformation_with_Andrea_Dekker.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:00am EDT

Have you wondered why you don’t seem to have enough time in your day? 

I use my Google calendar to organize my time, everything that would naturally occur in my life gets a time block on my calendar, including commute time. Then when I look at my week, I can play with those time blocks. Am I spending enough time in certain areas or too much time? 

I’ve been able to see all this time in my calendar and I’ve gotten better at estimating my time for my classes and assignments. This allows me to figure out where I have extra time and where I don’t have enough time.

Have you asked yourself, why don’t I get everything done?

Or do I have the capacity to take on something new?

Start looking at the pockets of time on your calendar that do not have anything associated with. Document how you use that time for a week or two and then you know if you have time you can actually give to something new and maximize your productivity.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Pursuing_a_PhD_7-_Organizing_Everything_on_My_Google_Calendar.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:00am EDT

Let’s break down one of the fastest spreading organizational news stories I’ve ever seen - Marie Kondo is admitting that her home is no longer tidy and she’s embracing it!

The news of Marie Kondo’s house being no longer organized spread like wildfire. This was not an accident. Marie Kondo is a worldwide sensation. She did an amazing job marketing her book and herself. She’s a renowned organizer and businesswoman.

Here are some past episodes I’ve done on Marie Kondo:

We all can feel better knowing that Marie Kondo is saying perfection does not exist. Although, if you have been following my podcast all this time, you know that I have always valued progress over perfection.

In this episode, I take the conversation in the media about organization a step further.

  • What does it mean to feel organized?

  • Can you recognize and observe organization or is it a feeling? Is organization the ability to quickly take action?

  • How do we know when we are organized or when we are no longer organized?

Your home and your organizational systems should be a representation of YOU. What’s important to you? What works for you? What doesn’t work for you? 

I LOVE my home. I love how I decorated it. I love how I organized it. I love what I’ve saved over the years. And I want you to love your home also. I want you to love the stuff you are maintaining, dusting and living with. I want you to look forward to being at home, walking around your own home and loving the things you see on the walls, shelves, even inside your storage room.

Organization and being organized is SO much more than minimalism. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!


On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU learn the skill of organization, too!

Meet Jamie and Jason Balmet in Oklahoma running a small business, raising 7 children, and homeschooling:

  • 10 year old twin boys

  • 7 year old twin boys

  • 5 year old girl

  • 2 year old boy

  • 3 month old boy

Jamie and Jason are currently in the accumulation phase and we talk today about how they handle this phase of life with home and work. We discussed how their housework is divided, they’ve got a great mix going on, and how the kids are involved in this.

They have some great tips on how to get the kids involved at home. One of the tips for this was to talk a lot about their family vision and how that plays into giving responsibility to everyone in the family.

Listen in as they tell us how their family began traveling full time to now putting down roots in Oklahoma. We also get to hear about how they organize things at work and home and how different their systems are; Jamie loves her paper and Jason is all about the digital side of things.

Because their business blends with work deadlines plus having family time, the communication aspect is key for the two of them. Being honest with each other about their needs and their  mental space is important to keeping things running smoothly.

How have they gotten to this place in their lives? They are very clear on what their goals are. Working in the business and on the business and being purposeful and intentional with planning plays a large part in how they have been able to succeed.

Tips from Jamie:

  • Be clear on your vision 

  • What are your family values

  • What are you saying yes to and what are you saying no to

  • Planning meetings annually and quarterly about

    • Business

    • Homeschool

    • Family

  • Be realistic with your time

EPISODE RESOURCES:

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Transformation_with_Jami_and_Jason_Balmet.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

This week I am talking about how I organize my assignments. Some of the things I use are Organize 365® Slash Pockets that are colored red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. These slash pockets help you organize the basic tasks you do at home and at work inside of a Sunday Basket® or a Friday Workbox®. These organize the everyday events, not the projects.

I am using colored slash pockets, productivity tabs, and highlighted documents to keep track of everything within my courses.

Red: Research Lab

Orange: Wednesday Class - Psych 501

Yellow: Thursday Class - Psych 502

The game changer for me was creating the excel spreadsheet with all assignments and reading ordered by due date and color coded. I cannot explain how much more grounded I felt when I could see in totality everything I needed to do inside of a 2-page spread. This gives me the extra buffer I need by allowing me to stay ahead.

If you have different moving deadlines, moving pieces, or moving parts that need to be done over a period of time, it may be helpful to put all of those into one big document in order of when things need to happen, versus keeping things separate in separate categories of your life.

What would happen if in very busy seasons of your life you would use this one big document to go by what is due next versus what role you are playing in your life?

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Pursuing_a_PhD_6-_Organizing_ALL_Your_Due_Dates_in_One_Document.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

When I started this podcast series looking at how I’ve used the Sunday Basket® over the years, I thought I’d be sharing with you the tactical details of how I use the Sunday Basket®. What I realized is that the Sunday Basket® is a habit. Like brushing your teeth, making the bed, getting ready in the morning. Things we didn’t do at one point and eventually they become part of your everyday life and routines. And that’s what the Sunday Basket® has become. It’s part of my everyday routine.

In this episode we are back in my present day life. My kids are now adulting. Their day to day needs are off my plate. I’ve outsourced a lot of the tasks that have to do with my home and I have a whole team at Organize 365®

Presently, my Sunday Basket® is running like a well-oiled machine. And it’s serving its purpose for Grayson, my grandson, as well. I end up with lots of toys that need batteries on Sunday. I drop those in there throughout the week and all the incoming mail. My Portable Sunday Basket® goes back and forth between my home and my office. I have a slash pocket for calls that need to be made during business hours and things that can’t be dealt with on Sundays.

What has really increased over the years, and if you listened to the previous episodes in this series, you have probably noticed the evolution of my Friday Workbox®. I have multiple Friday Workboxes® and pretty much always have. I used to have Friday Workboxes® set-up for different income streams. Now I have Friday Workboxes® for departments, teams and initiatives within Organize 365®.

But the biggest shift in my life right now is the transition I just made to becoming a student again. This was a big decision for me. And as I was trying to make the decision to take this leap, I asked myself “what if?” What if I do get my PhD? How will I feel? What if I don’t do this? And I decided, definitively, that if I didn’t say yes to this at this point in my life I would be disappointed. I would still want it four years from now. And this is the time to do it. To jump in with both feet and go for my dream of becoming a PhD.

So now I want to ask you, what if? What if you had the real Sunday Basket® with the playbook, the properly color coded slash pockets? What if you had access to the Sunday Basket® Club every Sunday as your accountability and success partner? What if you came to Planning Days with me and truly planned out your goals, assessed your routines and created a plan for your upcoming trimester? What if you took the courses inside The Productive Home Solution™ and learned to be organized while getting your entire home organized? What if everything in your home had a place and you had more time? What if you had a Friday Workbox® and Friday Workbox® Planning Day to help structure your work and deliver on your projects with ease? What if you knew what you were uniquely created to do?

Keep moving forward and keep making progress and thinking about what is possible.

I can’t wait to continue this series in five years. I’m excited about what’s to come for me and Organize 365®!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: 525_-_Lisas_Organization_Story_2022.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU learn the skill of organization, too!

Listen in as Emily and I come back together for the final episode of our podcast series. The things we are talking about we regularly talk about privately, but we feel that what we are sharing is meant for more than just ourselves. 

People really don’t talk about this: how you stay organized at home, how you survive hard things, how you transition through unexpected events. I am such a forward motion focused person, I’m always thinking about what is next. And this is what excites me and lights me up.

We talk about what you are uniquely created to do. It is not necessarily ONE thing, it is always evolving, changing, and growing. The Organize 365® mission is to help you get organized so that you have more time so you can do what you are uniquely created to do. My only goal is to show you the invisible work that you’re doing and you can decide if you want to continue doing it or not, organize it, habitualize it, or declutter it, so that you can get time to do what you are uniquely created to do. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!


During week 4, we talked about how I think in color and how it helps me to learn things faster. When focusing on learning something new, being able to chunk the information into at least 4 color categories as I am learning is really helpful.

I’ve learned how to add colors into writing my papers to help me remember which journals I am citing, which information is mine, and which information is from different authors.

As I am going through this PhD podcast, I hope that learning how you organize in one phase of life can inform and help you in the next phase of life.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Pursuing_a_PhD_5_-_Organizing_Paper_Citations_By_Color.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Are you ready for the positive, productive and proactive Lisa to make her debut? Welcome to 2017!

In this podcast, we explore the paradigm of personal and professional growth.

By 2017, I was running my in-home professional organizing business. It was BOOMING. But I had this gut feeling that it wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing.

I was noticing that a lot of the women I was organizing were diagnosed or self-diagnosed with ADHD. I enjoyed what I was doing so much that I wanted to reach more people. I wanted to make a strategic pivot in my business so I could have a larger impact.

During this period of my life, my Friday Workbox® took center stage. I went to an office supply store to get more slash pockets and found that they were no longer offering packs of solid colors - only the multi-colored packs. That’s when I realized that I needed to manufacture these slash pockets and bring this all together so people could master these systems and save time.

Talking through my ideas with my mom helped me think even beyond just manufacturing the slash pockets. She had me walk her through exactly how I would create a Sunday Basket® or Friday Workbox® if I were to create my own. And then she got to work with her sewing machine and the first Sunday Basket® prototype was born. Looking back, it was such an exciting time of growth for me - both personally and professionally.

I knew I needed to become a different kind of company (beyond in-home professional organizing). I needed a team. For the first time ever I was starting to trust my own intuition as a business owner. This is when I started to make the leap into the business owner and CEO you see today.

I hired my first coach. I needed to invest in myself to grow as a business owner. I knew that the cap to my business growth was me. I had to (and still do) grow for my business to grow.

All those things that I did gave me the investment in myself that I needed to understand my worth and grow into the role I wanted for myself. It’s okay for not every single thing I do in my business to be direct income generating.

I wanted to create systems and processes that anyone in the world could get a Sunday Basket® to save 5 hours per week to use for The Productive Home Solution™ to unlock their time for what they were uniquely created to do. And that’s what I’ve done. All of these organizing solutions and courses are available to you today because 2017 Lisa had a bigger vision for herself and for YOU!

How do you want to change your future? Learning to be organized can get you there. The time I spent as a professional organizer was what helped me create the courses we now offer at Organize 365®. I saw how much organization had a larger impact on people’s ability to achieve results. I share stories of this in this episode.

What impact could living an organized life have on you?

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: 524_Lisas_Organization_Story_2017_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU learn the skill of organization, too!

I’m excited to welcome back my sister, Emily Kelly, to the podcast for part 2 of 3 in this series. This has been much anticipated by the Organize 365® community and I was waiting for the perfect time for her to tell her story.

In part one of this podcast series, Emily Kelly shares her experience for the last year. Today she is sharing how she has organized her personal and work life during this time. Listen to Emily as she describes how she is using her Sunday Basket®, Friday Workbox®, and her slash pockets to sync her bills, goals, and her calendar.

Emily and I share what we looked like before slash pockets and binders while working together to settle our Dad’s estate. I share my CliffsNotes™ on how we handled this important time in our lives.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Emily_Kelly-_Organization_During_Multiple_Transitiions_-_Part_2..mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

The way I see the world in color is helping me organize my PhD studies and the work I am doing in school. Being able to use color allows me to chunk the information I am learning and help me remember it better.

Pink: For home it is anything related to your uniqueness and for work it is your ideas and marketing.

Purple: For home it is anything related to household work and projects and for work it is the visible work and projects.

Blue: For home it is anything related to your family and pets and for work it is your team and people.

Green: For home and work it is anything related to money and your invisible work.

I was able to learn how to do a literature review, how to do an annotated bibliography, and how to write a proposal for a conference using color for each of these key components. Whenever we talk about introductions it will be pink, whenever we talk about methods it will be blue, and whenever we talk about results it will be purple.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: PhD_4-_Organizing_Lecture_Notes_By_Color.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

When we left off in the previous episode, I was in the pit of despair. I wish I could say I was out of it by 2012. Spoiler alert - not quite. But 2012 is when a monumental shift began to happen.

I was 39 years old by this point. I quit my job. Our family was sinking into debt. Our kids medical needs were still high. I didn’t even recognize my own house (it was a wreck). And my marriage was feeling the strain.

My inherent organization ability had gotten me this far in life but now everything I knew about organization was not enough. I didn’t have a playbook or framework for being the person I needed to be - hosting the holidays, having kids with busy schedules (and going to two different schools), and all the other positions I found myself filling.

Which leads me to explore how we become disorganized. I think part of it is that we get to a point in our lives where we no longer have a story we are working towards.

This episode is really important because when you find Organize 365®, you're likely a pretty organized person and looking for more tips and tricks to be even more productive. But more of us stumble across Organize 365® when they realize “I can no longer continue this way for the rest of my life, there has to be another way.” And the good news is that if you have had this thought - there is another way. Change can be uncomfortable. But it is through this discomfort that you transform. I’ve seen it time and time again in the Organize 365® community.

What you may not be expecting is that when you need to learn the skill of organization the most is usually at a point in your life where you don’t have the time and money to do so. But by not budgeting the resources to get organized, you won’t be able to easily get out of re-living the same story you are trying to get out of. This is where I found myself in 2012. I was in the wrong story. Tune in and find out how I began to turn it around in 2012.

Also in this episode:

  • The Friday Workbox® takes center stage

  • Tips and Rules for Organizing Passion Projects & Hobbies

Want to hear more about my 2012 story and my 5 tips for organizing with depression? Listen to this podcast.

What is the organized story of me going forward? Stay tuned next week to find out! What is the organized story of you?

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

 

Direct download: 523_-_Lisas_Organization_Story_2012_1.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU learn the skill of organization, too!

I’m excited to welcome back my sister, Emily Kelly, to the podcast. This has been much anticipated by the Organize 365® community. And I was waiting for the perfect time for her to tell her story.

Emily Kelly worked for Organize 365® for about 5 years. When I last interviewed her on the podcast, she was embarking on a new adventure. She had found, what she believed to be, her DREAM JOB.

This is a three part series where we are going to get all the details on Emily’s journey since she left Organize 365®, but you are also going to get an in depth look at the relationship between Emily and me. Sibling relationships are unique because this is likely the longest relationship you will have in your life. Longer than your parents, your spouse, your children and your friends. You and your sibling(s) are in a unique position and have experienced things together that will forever just be an experience shared between you and them.

Emily experienced some very unexpected life events. And one of the lessons that she had learned during her time at Organize 365® kept her going in the right direction. Grace. Give it freely. To yourself and others. 

Flash forward to today and we find Emily, a new version of herself, ready to share the broken road that led her to exactly where she needs to be. But you will hear more about that in Part 3.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Emily_Kelly-_What_Happened_With_the_Dream_Job_-_Part_1.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Starting the PhD, I was as planned as you could possibly be. I even took care of all the possible health visits I could have before starting school just so I didn’t have to take away any time to do that once I started; now that is planning!

This journey is not easy, but I prefer to be positive and upbeat, not sharing everything that’s not working. I don’t pay attention to the things that I don’t have control over, but I am going to tell you the things that have gone wrong in the first 3 weeks just so I can point back to this episode and be like, “remember week 3”, not everything is perfect.

In preparing, I began by pretending, since I’m a pretty productive person, I could add in this extra 30 hours of work and nothing else would really be sacrificed. That’s not a thing because there aren’t 186 hours in a week, there are only 168 hours in a week. I’m hoping that the learnings that I take from this can be beneficial to you and whatever it is that you are adding to your plate and whatever you are striving to be as well.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

 

Direct download: PhD_3_-_I_Do_Not_Have_186_Hours.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

The year was 2007. And I was ROADKILL. Unexpected life events had run me over.

Divorce had unexpectedly hit my family. My father was in poor health. I was raising young children with medical diagnosis. I had attended one HUNDRED and ten doctors appointments. I came unglued. I reached my breaking point.

There I was standing in my kitchen. Not making sense. Tapping on a cabinet. Greg swooped in and got the kids out of the house. As I stood there pleading with myself, “You’ve got to get it together, Lisa!” 

I went upstairs to my room to figure out why I felt like I was falling apart. At the time, I had a physical planner. I flipped backwards through my planner and realized a pattern. I was spending so much time at doctor’s appointments. I started to tally it up and found that in the past year, I had gone to 110 doctor’s appointments.

Doctor’s appointments are not only time consuming, but they are expensive. So at the same time, I had become a “jill of all trades.” I was running my Creative Memories business, cleaning houses, organizing, tutoring, working for Scholastic book fairs and several other direct sales related jobs. 

No wonder I was falling behind and apart.

When it rains, it pours. My Sunday Basket® became my umbrella. I was overwhelmed. And I was being pushed to new limits. But I wasn’t disorganized. I cannot even imagine what this phase of my life would have looked like if I had not already had my Sunday Basket® system and routine in place.

I was not home much at all during this phase of life, but I always had my Sunday Basket® with me. Which meant I was able to still be productive while waiting at the doctor’s office or in the car pick-up line. This helped me keep up when life started moving way too fast.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

 

Direct download: 522_Lisas_Organization_Story_2007.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

show notes

Direct download: Transformation_with_Maggie_C.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

I’m so excited to introduce you to The Paper Solution® Binder & Course Bundle.

When I wrote the The Paper Solution® book, I knew I wanted to provide this offering. And we have finally been able to do it.

The Paper Solution® provides a complete solution to the unseen but impactful organization that allows you to have confidence and peace of mind during life's unexpected events.

Learning to become an organized person is both an outer and inner game.

It doesn't always look perfect but it provides calm in the storm, order in the midst of chaos, breathing room and clarity for you to think and make a plan as life continually pivots.

Life is a dance. A dance between the known and unknown. The necessary and unnecessary. How you want to spend your time and how you need to spend your time.

Along the way we have different levels of organization. Often when we talk about getting organized, we talk about our storage room, closet, kitchen or car. Places we can see with our eyes.

Mental organization and unexpected life event organization is often invisible. But oh so impactful when done properly.

If you have experienced one of these events:

  • Moved houses/apartments
  • Gotten married
  • Had a baby
  • Experienced a medical event for yourself or loved one
  • Lost a loved one

The invisible work that goes into navigating these life events is very stressful, and organization is your life raft.

The Organize 365® Binders were created out of all the unexpected events that I have lived through. I was looking for a solution. A solution to organize the invisible work I was doing and provide a playbook for what needed to be done.

The Paper Solution® provides you with everything you need:

  • The Medical Binder
  • The Financial Binder
  • The Household Operations Binder
  • The Household Reference Binder
  • Lifetime Access to The Paper Solution® Course Dashboard
    • Which includes: Editable downloads, lessons for each binder, tips from Certified Organizers
  • Organize 365® Virtual Paper Organizing Retreat on Demand
  • Access to the Organize 365® Community App and The Paper Solution® Community Group

 

Ready to learn more? Visit The Paper Solution® Course page.

Direct download: Coffee_Chat_-_Introducting_The_Paper_Solution_Binder_Bundle.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

There is a difference between perfectionism and setting up a system. My first writing assignment should have taken me just an hour or two but instead it took me eight hours. I shared my new adventure on Instagram stories and many of you told me to take a page from my own book and embrace progress over perfection. YES! I hear you but let me explain…

I wasn’t trying to be perfect. I was trying to spend some time now to set-up my systems and create a template for myself to save me time in the future. Does this sound familiar to you? This is EXACTLY what organizing does. Organizing is an investment in time today for a future exponential return on time.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media! 

Direct download: PhD_2__Setting_Up_Systems_for_Writting.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

This podcast is the first in a series of five that will walk you through different life phases and stages I’ve experienced, and how The Sunday Basket® has been my partner in productivity along the way!

Join me in my time machine as we take a glimpse into what my life looked like in 2002 and how The Sunday Basket® was created to support me during this phase of life.

In 2002, I had two babies, a successful career in direct sales, the same house I still live in today and of course, Greg! I also had a paper pile problem. And everyday I was playing “the paper pile game”. I would leave my ever-growing pile of papers (bills, mail, to-do lists, calls to make, checks to be deposited and everything in between) on one side of my kitchen island. Each day I would have the best of intentions to tackle that paper pile; but often I would have just enough time to shuffle the papers around before one of the babies needed me and then right back on the counter it would go. That process was repeated day in and day out.

How could I make this paper pile more actionable? 

One night as my family slept, I finally laid out all the papers in front of me. I began to sort the paper piles into categories. By the end of that evening, I had 40 separate “piles” that were now categorized.

The next day I was able to grab just one of those categories (I had separated them all into binder dividers I had on hand) and take immediate action. Oh my goodness! What a profound impact this had on me. It felt so good to finally be taking action and little by little I watched the paper pile shrink. 

I put all the binder dividers in a Longaberger basket (remember those?) and I began to add any new mail, paper, notes, to-dos, etc. into the basket. Then each Sunday, I would sit down and go through it. This is where I learned how to prioritize things that needed to be done before the next Sunday and plan my week ahead as a mother and direct sales leader. 

The impact of breaking down my paper piles into actionable chunks was HUGE. This is how The Sunday Basket® was born!

Want to have your own The Sunday Basket® experience like I did? 

We have a FREE 5 Day Sunday Basket® Mini Course that you can join now. This course will walk you through gathering your paper piles and how to sort them in 5 daily tasks. 

Join me next episode as my journey takes a stark turn from babies and bliss to chaotic and unexpected. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: 521-Lisas_Organization_Story_2002.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU learn the skill of organization, too!

Today I’m so excited to introduce you to Laura L. During the pandemic she found me via the Organize 365  podcast.  Laura started her Organize 365® journey with The Sunday Basket® and the binders.  She also created binders for her parents.

The day she got the MS diagnosis, the Medical Binder and the Sunday Basket® became monumental to her daily success.

Laura got into the habit of taking her Medical Binder with her to doctor’s appointments. She loves having everything at her fingertips.  She has noticed that she gets a poor cellular signal in the medical buildings; so it’s nice to have the paper copy to reference. 

Laura was already a fan of all things Organize 365®; but she felt compelled to share her success story with others.  Laura launched her business and is The Paper Solution® Certified. She is thankful for the peace of mind that comes from the organization offered by the Sunday Basket®.  

 Recently at her daughter’s wedding the portable Sunday Basket® was called “The Bag with All the Nuclear Codes.” She was organized and had all the information with her in her portable Sunday Basket ®. Then again the very next day it held the information needed for her mother because she had a doctor’s appointment to take her to.

Her advice if you are just getting started: “Just carve out the time to do it!”

EPISODE RESOURCES:

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: VY_Transformation_with_Laura_L_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Episode 1 - Over Prepared

Even though I am the CEO of Organize 365® I am not exempt from life events that can throw a person off track. I only got a 48 hour honeymoon phase of balancing life, work and school until life showed up! But we are in it now - I’m juggling home and school and family!

As I pondered the week I have concluded to only try to be seven days ahead, not four years! I was so over prepared I didn’t know what to do with myself and then it dawned on me that I could work ahead. I learned I could even test ahead if I’m prepared. And I just may do that because who knows when life is going to show up again!

Listen in to hear how my family has handled the transition!

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: PhD_1__Over_Prepared.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

I am not a CPA and neither am I on my way to becoming one…but I have learned so much about how to get organized for optimal results when it comes to doing or getting your taxes done. And I’d love to share some ideas on how to organize the paperwork you need for your taxes and make the tax season easier for you.

Whether you do your taxes yourself or have someone do them for you - it is in your best interest to have organized documentation. Documentation is key!

The Organize 365® Income and Expense Binder holds all your substantiating documentation for your business.  Did you know you need 7 years of substantiating documentation?  Now there is a way to effortlessly keep track of everything.  This binder will give you peace of mind at tax time. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: 520_-_Tax_Organization__Deductions.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share their challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU learn the skill of organization, too!

I have spoken about life events and how they derail us from time to time.  Rosa E. came to the paper workshop and was energized to get her home organized.  Little did she know that shortly thereafter her mother would be moving in with her permanently. A life event was about to derail her.  

Now that her mother has moved in, her family is finding a new normal.  I offered some ways she could spend some special and intentional time with her mother. I speculate that this model of multigenerational homes may become popular due to the economy and all the demands on two parents in the workforce. I also shared how this works in my house with Abby and Grayson living there.  Each family’s space is considered mini condos or apartments. And I teach this starting in the Organize 365® Kids Program. It’s easier to divide common spaces up and identify personal spaces. Everyone needs a “safe space” to decompress and do what they want to do without answering to anyone. 

I also pointed out that we all like the Sunday Basket® because it speaks to us, we’re all just 12 year olds at heart.  And now she’s implementing a Sunday Basket® for her mother too. To top it all off, Rosa is also starting a new career.  She’s home organizing and The Paper Solution® Certified.  She has been using the Friday Workbox® as her partner in success as she’s starting her business.  She attributes the Friday Workbox® to helping her schedule her week, think ahead to marketing and networking, and grow her organizational business in Arizona.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Transformation_with_Rosa_E..mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

I just experienced a Golden Window and I want to share with you how I got organized to embark on my back-to-school journey!

When I shared with you all that I’m going back to school to earn a PhD, I got a lot of suggestions. So many amazing suggestions that I literally started a pink slash pocket so I wouldn’t lose any of these valuable ideas. And, of course, I want to share everything with you.

Here’s why - this journey is super helpful if you are also going back to school (whether you’re working towards a PhD or a different degree). And it’s also helpful to apply my journey and my experiences to any and all of life’s changes. The type of organizing I’m doing to get ready for my PhD experience is no different than the type of organizing and preparation I would recommend for any life change or transition - having a baby, moving, starting a new job, getting ready to retire, getting ready to welcome grandchildren. When you are getting ready to make a change (especially one that will impact your daily schedules and routines) it’s important to look around your home and at your organizational systems to make them as functional, organized and efficient as possible for what life is going to look like for the foreseeable future.

This is a whole new life transition.  Remember recently when I explained the difference between ReadySetGo? I have completed all household projects, put systems in place, reorganized my schedule, and I am in “Go” mode. This has been a major transition for me and I really evaluated how I spend my time, my habits, my routines, and looked for 30 hours I could devote to my post-baccalaureate first, and then my PhD. 

I will be taking you all on this journey with me.  I could not be more excited and in four short years I will have earned my General PhD in Psychology from Fielding University!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Stay connected with me and see behind the scenes on Instagram.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: 519_-Organizing_My_PhD_Journey_ep._1_2.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share their challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU learn the skill of organization, too!

Kristen K. had a demanding full time job and a demanding two year old.  When she “broke”, she found herself searching for productivity podcasts. Lucky me, Organize 365® came up and Kristen was listening so she could gain control over her boxes of mail. Kristen was taking vacation days just to address these boxes of mail; and she knew there had to be a more productive way. Paper can easily get the better of anyone. After listening to multiple episodes, she knew the next step was the Sunday Basket. You guys, she still has her original Sunday Basket and uses it faithfully! She’s even gone further to become a certified organizer so she can help others. She knows the struggle and doesn’t want others to go through the same struggle.

Kristen made an interesting side comment during this episode. She said, “I mean I had to do it, I knew my husband wasn’t going to help.” Too often we think our family is going to join us in this organization endeavor. No, they may not - and that’s ok. You have to go into it knowing this is a “you” thing.

We also discussed productivity vs. priority! Being productive is NOT prioritizing your tasks. Pick your priority, and that priority is ONE. You can prioritize ONE section of your life or ONE room in your house. We go over all the ins and outs of this topic in the episode. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Transformation_with_Kristen_K..mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Is it possible? Can you put enough systems in place to correct or manage ADHD? After diving into ADHD and running all the tests, the ADHD expert was convinced I did not have ADHD. However, when we took a deeper dive into my childhood and who I was before Organize 365®; it was a clear picture of a person with ADHD.  The expert explained that all the systems I have put in place, combined with hiring out the tasks that I struggle withI have masked the fact that I have ADHD!

I didn’t always believe in an ADHD diagnosis.  When I was young and thought I knew everything, I was convinced children just needed a little more discipline and manners.  Some children just had a lot of energy is how I explained it.  But then I had one student who put me in my place.  I thought it was crazy for mom and dad to try medication for the little girl during the VERY last week of school.  But much to my surprise; she was a very bright student and the medication helped ADHD get out of her way! I realized I knew nothing about anything. 

Isn’t it funny how the more you know, the more you realize that you know very little? Once we adopted children, I loved to play preschool with them.  It wasn’t until a routine doctor visit that it was brought to my attention that I would be raising a child with ADHD. At this point, I craved information to help my children to succeed. I was lucky enough to attend seminars in Cincinnati with all the best doctors and learn about ADHD!  

Now I’m embarking on my PhD journey, where I’ll be focusing on the brain and the eight executive functions. That’s right! I’m a lifelong learner and am confident that I have the systems in place that I need to be organized and succeed. It has come full circle and I’m here to share it with all of you!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

 


What does it mean to be organized?

How do you know when you’re done organizing?

No one has ever officially defined "organized." I decided I would define it. We started by conducting academic-level research using our surveys. You can read more about Organize 365® Research and the finding on our Research page.

For most Americans, organization happens as Swiss cheese organizing.

You’re a little organized here and a little organized there. You can’t confidently say, “I AM organized,” because you think that being organized means perfection while not being organized is hoarding. You don’t have language for what happens in the middle of these two!

We need to consider the idea of done rather than perfect.

In this episode, I share many statistics and findings from our research, which is all leading us to change the way we present and teach the material in The Productive Home Solution™. 

If you just get through the first 42 days of the 100 Day Home Organization Program, you will have 80% of the spaces you use on a daily basis organized. You CAN call yourself organized. But many of you don’t FEEL organized. It doesn’t fully check off any single category of organizing as complete for you. It just marks a couple more spaces in your Swiss cheese organizing. I want to see you get to the point where you can say that you are personally organized or storage organized or paper organized, etc. You get to pick and choose which areas you want to tackle and master and declare organized in your life.

Coming in the fall in The Productive Home Solution™, you will be able to pick an area, focus on it for 5 or 6 weeks, and then declare that area of your life organized. You’ll work in baby steps to mark a full area as done so you can move on to the next area you want to organize. 

But what does it mean to be organized? Both men and women declare their home organized when… You’ll have to listen in to find out the answer!

Learn more about and join The Productive Home Solution™ here.

 

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

Direct download: Org365-Glossary-012.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

For 2022, we are adding to the Lisa glossary. This week, we are talking about the Organize 365® Research projects No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about the ideas and beliefs that are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing.

Several years ago, as I was writing the Organize 365® vision, I knew that I wanted to conduct research to bring to light the organizational needs of Americans. I want to be the go-to resource for knowledge about home and paper organization.

I legitimately had no idea how to do research surveys and data analysis. Recently, I have been learning about the difference between market research and academic research. Organize 365® is now sponsoring academic-level study and third-party data collection backed by Harrisburg University. 

Research always starts with a hypothesis — what you think the result will be. I wanted research results that showed that women are doing the majority of the work at home. But, that’s now what we found. We have started to share our initial research findings.

As I learn more about research, we really end up with more questions. One of the steps in research is to define every term used in study surveys. For example, you cannot ask a participant about “mental health” because that term is too broad and open to interpretation. However, you can ask about anxiety or depression. 

When we developed the first survey, I needed to figure out how to define “housework.” The research questions ended up focusing on four different types of housework.

Cleaning - Cleaning is related to the dwelling and covers any task a cleaning company would do. Learn more back in Podcast 422

Tasks of Daily Living - These are tasks related to the person regardless of where they live. These are the tasks defined by Social Security Disability and include things like preparing food, consuming food, running errands, planning meals, and washing laundry. Learn more back in Podcast 424.

Maintenance - is an optional housework activity where the property owner makes an additional infusion of money into their investment (property) to maintain and improve their property. In the long run, maintenance expenses increase the value of the initial investment. Learn more back in Podcast 428

Organizing - is an optional housework activity where a person makes an investment of current time for a future return of time. This is completely optional and customizable. Time spent today organizing results in an exponential time in the future. Often this involves setting up systems of organization and can be applied to renters and owners. Learn more back in Podcast 426

 

Literature Review 

As part of academic research, researchers look at other studies done on similar topics. The Organize 365® review looked at the role of women in the 21st century home. As I mentioned above, I thought women were doing all of the housework. It turns out that everyone thinks they are doing the majority of the work at home. There is so much work to be done.

Defining housework and recognizing these four areas makes housework feel overwhelming and never-ending. As women become more effective at articulating their role in housework, families will be able to better understand how much work is being done and proactively decide if the work should continue to be done at all. 

Our next study survey has been completed and we are busy analyzing the results. Learn more back in Podcast 430.

#myextra5 

The Sunday Basket® consistently saves people at least five hours a week by getting organized and being proactive. Through organization, you get extra time, and we all need more time. Follow or tag Organize365® on Instagram and share how you are spending your extra time once you get organized! — #myextra5

 

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

Direct download: Org365_Glossary_010__-_The_Lisa_Glossary_Part_10__Organize_365_Binders.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

For 2022, we are adding to the Lisa glossary. This week, we are talking about ditching the file cabinet and establishing essential household binders. I also want to be your teacher to help you get your home and work paper organized and functional. 

No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about the ideas and beliefs that are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing.

As a professional organizer, I used to teach people how to build (and hopefully maintain) a color-coded file cabinet at home. But, in 2017, I had a sickening revelation that what I was teaching was not working. In a short time, I heard from two audience members who needed to emergently evacuate. No matter how organized their files were, their paper was not portable.

I am a functional organizer, and I learned that our paper needs to be portable and limited to a reasonable amount of space. It was time to ditch the file cabinets and organize reference papers into essential household binders.

File cabinets are typically not well-maintained and they are certainly not portable. America needs a better solution for reference paperwork. 

After some ongoing analysis, I realized that household paper generally fits into four categories. I look at my own life experience caring for my ill father and settling his estate. I look at my life as a homeowner. I thought about all of the information it took to keep my household organized and my family functioning. 

There were no ready-made systems for being a caregiver and executor when my father passed away. I have worked with the members of the team who have gone through similar life challenges to try and make our binders as broad and effective as possible. But, because they are binders, they can also be adapted to handle any life situation you encounter.

I created a reference binder for each of the four areas of essential household paperwork. Tax forms and kid's memories live outside of this system, but everything else that needs to be saved can typically be fit into one of the four essential binders. 

The Four Essential Household Binders

Organize 365® sells physical binders to help with your household paper organization. The contents for each binder are also detailed in The Paper Solution book. However, our physical binders have multiple pages of worksheets that help get the information from the many places it lives organized into one location. 

Setting up the binders will make your life more organized and easier. But, it is also a gift for your family. If anyone else ever needs to take over any portion of your #adulting, they will have what they need at their fingertips. 

Financial Organizing Binder

This binder details your current and future financial information. It includes retirement accounts, vehicles, insurance, home inventory, estate planning, and funeral plans. 

This binder was originally designed for someone to be able to take over your financial life and close your estate. It can help with tracking bills, setting a house, or cancelling a lease. 

I estimate that in order to have a comprehensive financial binder, you will get 30% from your file cabinet, 30-40% digital information, and 30-40% in your memory or on random papers in your home.

Medical Reference Binder

This binder is designed to be used mainly by a caregiver. You can set one up if you are caring for someone else, or you can set one up to make it easier for a friend or family member to care for you. 

Although medical records are electronic, they are siloed in each medical practice. Many of the software systems do not effectively share information. Pharmacy, doctors, dentists, specialists, and insurance companies all have their own record systems in America. 

I estimate that 5-10% of this information lives in your file cabinet right now. 40-50% is online in some kind of medical record system. The other 40-55% is not recorded anywhere (yet!). 

Your medical binder is also a perfect place to keep a list of questions for your next appointment, write down observations, record behavior changes, and communicate with other caregivers.

This binder has a comprehensive workbook that includes a health history, childhood milestone tracker, symptom recorder, and place to record what you have already attempted. 

Life is short and the unexpected happens. We will either need caregivers or be caregivers. Having a portable, concise medical reference binder will help you to get the best care.

Household Reference Binder

This binder is the one I use most frequently. It is designed for people who are homeowners but can be used if you rent too. 

This binder is designed to have all the reference information you would keep organized if your house was a person. If you were selling your house tomorrow, you could hand over the binder to the new owners. The binder contains home improvement information, paint colors, appliance information, and landscaping details. 

Typically, 80% of the contents of this binder are already in your file cabinet. Manuals, make and model numbers, serial numbers, and similar information can be stored in the binder. I also recommend keeping receipts for purchases here too so you know when it was purchased and how much it cost. 

Household Operations

The Household Operations binder is all of the paperwork and information you need to run your household. No matter what kind of dwelling you have, you need a place to track meal planning, cleaning schedules, events, holidays, vacations, and pet information.

As a teacher, I think of this binder as my lesson plan book for my family. 

Why binders?

Papers that live in your file cabinet are not enough for someone to come in and manage your life. Some of the information on the pages in the binder lives in your computer, in your head, and in physical places like your wallet. 

File cabinets are not portable. Most of our emergencies involve leaving the house. We evacuate or lose our homes to a fire or flood. Someone gets hospitalized and we need the paperwork available for the healthcare team. 

In true emergency situations, it is rare to need reference papers at home. Usually, you need them where you need to go. Papers need to be taken to the family member, a doctor, a lawyer, or a school meeting. 

File cabinets hold far more information and physical paper than most of us can effectively manage. When I helped professional organization clients clean out their paperwork, most can declutter at least 80%.

What about tax paperwork?

Keep it in a file cabinet or file box. These items are bulky and rarely referenced. In a true emergency, you could replace them. 

What about kid-related papers?

Kid’s School Memory Binder

Kids enjoy their own memories most when they are young and can see their own growth and progress. When your kids are in the midst of their accumulation phase or survival phase of life, they probably will not have time to sit down and look through their old math tests and spelling lists. 

But, when your kids are young, you might be amazed at how much joy they get from looking at their artwork, stories, and projects. They will sit down with their binders and tell stories about school that you might not otherwise get to hear. 

Have your kids help to make their own memory binder and then use them. Sit down together and see what they have to say about certificates, awards, and their own creations. 

Warrior Mama Binder

For kids who have an IEP or 504, we have the Warrior Mama binder. This is a combination of medical and educational information that will help you to keep your child’s paperwork organized and help you to advocate for his or her best education. 

Walk Softly and Carry a Big Binder

My children are adopted and both needed additional support in their educational journey. I found that when I was going to advocate for my kids, I needed the medical and educational papers together for both doctor’s appointments and school meetings. I needed medical tests, health records, and learning assessments all in one place.

Your binder will hold essential details and can cut down on the time you need to spend to get your support professionals up to speed. This gives you more effective time during appointments. In my own experience, having paper documentation raises your expertise level with professionals and gives you immediate credibility. 

Why Not Digital?

In all the times I have advocated for the people I love, paper has worked best. No one has ever asked me for a digital file. Often, systems are incompatible with one another. Records from the doctor are not easily accessible by the school record-keeping system. 

Paper is immediate. Sending a digital file after a meeting has not gotten the same results as passing around a physical paper during a meeting when all of the decision-makers are gathered together.

 

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

Direct download: Org365-Glossary-010.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

For 2022, we are adding to the Lisa glossary. This week, we are talking about The Paper Solution. In 2020, I published a book called The Paper Solution. I also want to be your teacher to help you get your home and work paper organized and functional. 

No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about the ideas and beliefs that are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing.

Paper is my thing. I love writing on paper, I love organizing paper, I love everything about paper.

But, as a professional organizer, I realized there is very little information available about how to organize paper, the categories of paper we deal with in our lives, and how to actually use paper in everyday life. 

Less Paper, not Paperless.

Although we have been promised a “paperless” society, the reality is that the US is a paper-based society. We are able to handle more things digitally than ever before, but we still need physical paper for many things in life. 

In America, our vaccine cards, birth certificates, vehicle titles, and medical records are all physical paper. Other parts of the world have digital systems for these things, but because of the uniqueness of our government and our focus on freedoms, we do not have universal, digital records for these things.

In my own life, physical paper has saved me over and over. Paper means that I can avoid expensive professional fees, and it gives me authority with lawyers, doctors, and school principles. In America, paper is the way I (and you) can substantiate claims and provide proof of what you know. Paper is useful in settling estates, advocating for children during IEP meetings, and for communicating vital health information during a medical emergency. 

The Paper Solution

The Sunday Basket® is the foundation of an organized home. The Sunday Basket® starts as a physical basket that holds actionable papers. But, really, it is so much more. It is a weekly habit of processing and looking proactively at the upcoming week that keeps the household running more smoothly. 

In 2020, I published The Paper Solution as a physical book. It is written to change your mindset about papers, and to give you the practical tools to get your household papers organized. 

The Big Purge

As a professional organizer working in people’s homes, I saw over and over that file cabinets allow us to save much more paper than we ever in. Surprisingly, most Americans can get rid of 80% of their filed papers and will never need them again. 

You can declutter your papers in as little as 15 minutes a day. Take a few file folders out and review them. Make piles for papers to recycle, shred, and save. Put the “save” papers back in the file cabinet. 

If you have ever taken care of a loved one’s papers, you know how vital it is to have important papers organized and easy to find. Take care of the people you love by clearing out all the old papers that no longer need to be stored or saved.

Types of Paper - Actionable and Reference

Of the papers that should be kept, there are two main categories. 

Actionable papers are papers that require you to take some action — bills to pay, grocery lists to buy, or a note to book that vacation hotel. 

Reference papers are all of the other papers we save — bank account numbers, retirement statements, wedding cards, and love letters. These we may look at again sometime in the future, but they mostly need to be kept safe.

Ditch the File Cabinet

After years of helping people get their files color-coded and organized in a file cabinet, I had several clients who were facing emergency evacuations. The reality was that they did not have time to pull out important documents during their emergency. 

That is when I realized that our reference papers need to be portable and there must be a constraint on how much paper we keep. It’s not realistic to load up an entire file cabinet when trying to get away from a forest fire or a hurricane. 

For several years, I have been teaching people to ditch the file cabinet and replace it with several essential reference binders. (More on this in the next podcast). 

Certified Organizers

America is going to need a team of trained professionals who understand the skill of organizing to teach it to others. The Organize 365® system offers different levels of assistance for learners depending on their personal needs. 

Certified Organizers are trained by Organize 365® to provide 1:1 or small group coaching, assistance, and support. I want you to have what you need to get organized and to be successful. 

We all need to have our paperwork organized. You can do it now, or you can do it after an emergency. It is a blessing to do it now — it is a gift to yourself and those who love you.

Organize 365® offers The Paper Solution for any type of paper you have. Actionable, household, reference, or work. Learn more at organize365.com!

 

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

Direct download: Org365-Glossary-009_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

See the full blog post at organize365.com/special-circumstances-organize-365-story-part8

This is part eight of a series sharing the Organize 365® Story. I want to talk with you about some special circumstances that impact your organizational journey. As always, I start with helping you to get the right mindset about home organization. I want to give you the ability to look at your life circumstances and understand the ways in which they are impacting your organization. Getting your thoughts and mindset ordered is vital to ordering your physical spaces. I want to share with you some life circumstances and talk about how they affect your thinking and your organizing work. This week, I want to share some special circumstances you may face in order to help the Organize 365® community to have a shared vocabulary and foundational language.

No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about how I special circumstances and their impact on organization. These ideas are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing and will help you take those first steps towards learning the skills of organization in order to progress along your transformational journey. 

See all eight parts of this series at organize365.com/glossary

 

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

 

Direct download: Org365-Glossary-008.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

See the show notes at organize365.com/redefining-work-organize-365-story-part7

This is part seven of a series sharing the Organize 365® Story. I want to talk with you about how you define "work." As always, I want to share my mindset and thinking with you. I also want to share how owning a home or running a household can also be your work. In this podcast, I also share many of the words I use surrounding the concept of work that help me to be more efficient, productive, and effective.

This week, I want to share my perspectives on work to help the Organize 365® community to have a shared vocabulary and foundational language. No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about how I think about work. These ideas are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing and will help you take those first steps towards learning the skills of organization.

 

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

Direct download: Org365-Glossary-007_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

See the blog post at organize365.com/redefining-time-organize-365-story-part6

This is part six of a series sharing the Organize 365® Story. I want to talk with you about how you look at time affects your organization and productivity. As always, I focus on helping you get the right mindset about how you spend your time. Time is the most abstract concept that will have the longest impact on how you spend the rest of your life. I want to share with you some of the ways you can change your mindset and how I think about time has changed over time and has helped me to grow in productivity. This week, I want to share my perspectives on time to help the Organize 365 community to have a shared vocabulary and foundational language.

No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about how I think about time. These ideas are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing and will help you take those first steps towards learning the skills of organization.

 

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

Direct download: Org365-Glossary-006.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

See the full blog post at: organize365.com/home-organization-perspective-organize-365-story-part5

This is part five of a series sharing the Organize 365® Story. I want to talk with you about getting your home organized. As always, I start with helping you to get the right mindset about home organization. I want to give you the ability to figure out how to organize your home for yourself. Getting your thoughts and mindset ordered is much more effective than ordering your physical spaces. I want to share with you some of the ways you can change your mindset and the way you name the spaces in your home. This week, I want to share my home organization perspectives to help the Organize 365® community to have a shared vocabulary and foundational language.

No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about how I think about how we get our homes organized. These ideas are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing and will help you take those first steps towards learning the skills of organization.

 

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

Direct download: Org365-Glossary-005.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

See the full blog post at: organize365.com/renaming-home-spaces-organize-365-story-part4
 
This is part four of a series sharing the Organize 365® Story. This week, I want to share how you rename the spaces in your home to make them more functional as part of your transformational journey to an organized life. I define and explain things like a hot mess room and a drink station. I share how the names you give different spaces in your home can dramatically affect how you think about them. This podcast and our new glossary will help the Organize 365® community to have a shared vocabulary and foundational language.
 
No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about different ways I organize homes to make them functional.
 
This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.
Direct download: Org365-Glossary-004.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

See the full blog post at: overwhelm-to-plan-organize-365-story-part3

This is part three of a series sharing the Organize 365® Story. This week, I want to talk with you about what happens as we move from one phase to the next. Typically, we get overwhelmed, feel like we are living in chaos, and struggle to have a plan. We struggle to keep pace with the new change while we are trying to learn a new level of organization, and the transition takes longer than we expect. As things get moving faster and you begin to feel overwhelmed, the way to regain clarity and be able to adjust from being reactive to productivity is the Sunday Basket®. This week, I want to share the details of the Sunday Basket® to help the Organize 365® community to have a shared vocabulary and foundational language.

No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about how I think about how we get our homes organized. These ideas are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing and will help you take those first steps towards learning the skills of organization.

 

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

Direct download: Org365-Glossary-003.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Check out the blog post at organize365.com/cycles-seasons-organize-365-story-part2

This is part two of a series sharing the Organize 365® Story. This week, I want to share the cycles and seasons you will experience along your transformational journey to an organized life. This podcast and our new glossary will help the Organize 365® community to have a shared vocabulary and foundational language.

No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about the cycles and seasons that influence your organizing journey and that are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing.

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

Direct download: Org365-Glossary-002.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Check out the blog post and more details here:  organize365.com/organizing-foundation-organize-365-story-part1

This week on the blog, I am starting a series sharing the foundation of Organize 365®. I share the five foundational principles that are the bedrock of everything I teach inside of Organize 365®. I want to ensure that we have a common vocabulary and you know what the foundational principles are. No matter when you being your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you.

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Has your New Year’s energy kicked in yet? It’s time to capitalize on that energy! We know you have goals and we have the tools you need to get you there!

One of the things that I have learned over the last decade is that life is work. There’s unpaid work at home and paid work at work and sometimes there’s unpaid work at work and sometimes there’s paid work at home. It’s all work. In order for me to be the best me I can be I need to plan for both the unpaid and the paid work that is my privilege and responsibility as a contributing member of society.

We have heard from many of you that you are trying to decide or pick what your focus will be in 2023 and I say we should just have it all.

An organized person unlocks their time, allowing them to pursue what they are uniquely created to do! The start of the new year feels like the turning of a page, a clean slate to make lasting organizational change in our lives - at home and at work. Organization is a learnable skill. One that will take you wherever you want to go.

Follow your renewed energy that the new year brings and use it to maximize your progress! Half the battle in learning the skill of organization is deciding what to do next. The “Organization Is For ME 2023” Bundle can make those decisions for you. This bundle will assist you with getting organized and making consistent progress towards your goals at HOME and at WORK.

Why can’t we have it all? Why can’t you be organized with your paid work and your unpaid (but oh so fulfilling) unpaid work? 

That’s why we’ve put together the Organization is for Me in 2023 Bundle - to help you do just that. You don’t have to choose between work and home. This bundle is going to give you the courses and tools you need to excel at both. 

In this bundle you’ll get The Productive Home Solution™ with Planning Day. As well as The Friday Workbox® system with the Goal Planner and Planning Day for your work.

Imagine how amazing it will feel to unlock your time in 2023?! How it would feel to come home to an organized house and create a system and routine for managing your work, passion projects or business?

This is your YEAR! Be all you can be with the Organization is for Me 2023 Bundle!

Episode Resources:

Direct download: Bonus_Episode_-_Organization_is_for_Me_in_2023.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Last week I shared with you that one of my weaknesses has been overcoming the fact that I usually "ready, fire, aim" as opposed to "ready, set, go."

Learning to do the SET step in Ready, Set, Go has been my weakness. What I have found from nearly 11 years of working with the Organize 365® community is that GO is the area that tends to trip you up.

Being able to GO - actually getting started or keep moving on your goals and overcome your self-limiting doubt - can paralyze us.

I used to be where you are. I used to worry about what others would think of me. Will Greg (my husband) judge me? Can I meet or exceed my own goals? What if I can't do what I want to do? What if I can't live up to my own expectations? What if I invest time or money and fail?

The what ifs would paralyze me and keep me from starting. It allowed me to stay stuck. Stuck in my reactive and negative life. I would start a cycle of getting ready and set but never going. 

Ready, Set, repeat. There was no risk with ready and set. I didn't have to step too far out on a limb or too far out of my comfort zone.

Then one day I asked myself - what if everything happened for me? What if everything was easy? What if I did achieve these goals? What if I was able to achieve a bigger impact on my family, community and ultimately the world?

And I ask you - What if I had never started Organize 365®? What if I stopped podcasting tomorrow because I worry about looking silly or foolish? What if all of the Organize 365® products went away and were no longer resources to you?

How did that make you feel?

I don't know what it is that you have to offer the world. I don't know what a more organized life with less stress and more time will do for your family, your community and your work - but I bet it is more than you even realize now. And ultimately the only way we will know is if you GO. If you actually get started. Stop holding onto that branch of self-limiting beliefs and negative what-ifs. It's time to take the next step in your organizing journey - it's time for you to go.

What great timing! We are headed into a new year - clear out your house, clear out the cobwebs in your mind. Get ready, set, and let's GOOOOO. I believe in you. You can do this, you have what it takes, and the time is now. Please join me. We are going to do this together.

If your goal is to reclaim your home and your time - I have the solution for you. The Productive Home Solution™ is a new way of thinking about your space and time! Half of the battle with anything we are ready and set to do is deciding what the next step is (and then the next step after that). Avoid decision fatigue and use The Productive Home Solution™ as your roadmap to guide you through the journey of getting organized. Organization will carry you through so many of your goals; and was the first step for me getting to where I am today.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: 517-_Go..._Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Today I will be giving you a full orientation on the Organize 365® Kids Program.

Children want to be helpful. They love to learn and want to please adults! And in a perfect world, we would all have plenty of time to work together to keep a home clean and tidy.

But we often don’t have the time or energy. Our time and patience gets consumed by after-school activities, homework, housework, and adult work.

Teaching your children the skill of organization is an absolute must. These skills will serve them well while they're living in your household and, one day, their own. The Organize 365® Kids Program is your solution. This is your “get organized'' class for kids.” Taught directly to them by me!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Direct download: Bonus_Episode_-_The_Kids_Program_Orientation_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Meet Michelle. She’s the voice behind the mailbag introductions on the podcast and the Customer Service Team lead here at Organize 365®. Michelle is SO loved by the Organize 365® team and customers!

She got quite the surprise when I asked if I could come and organize her storage area and video it for The Productive Home Solution™!  You guys…my home is already SO organized, including my storage area.  I’ve already shown everyone in The Productive Home Solution™ my storage area too many times. It was time for me to tackle someone else’s storage room.

The progress we made in ONE DAY may seem unbelievable; but it is all very doable when you know the order of the tasks you need to complete to get organized! 

Michelle picked me up at the airport and we got to work. Thank goodness we had a dumpster. We started by focusing on what could go in that dumpster.  We were able to tackle a tucked away storage area with old shelving and her garage.  

Michelle, who described the experience as “humbling”, almost had us pass on that tucked away storage area. But looking back, that was the most rewarding space to get organized. We really forced Michelle to focus on what we could get rid of first by repeatedly saying “You have the dumpster, we are here, what can go?”. Then we focused on cleaning and reloading the storage area by zones. 

Michelle said it felt like a 40 year old weight had been lifted off her shoulders at the end of the day. Her mom (who also lives in the home) was so pleased at what we accomplished in one day.  

When you listen to this episode, I want you to be inspired and know that you too can learn how to get an organized storage area and then go do it. Once you have it organized properly, it should stay organized for a very long time…if not forever. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!


Wow, a lot can happen in a year! As you reflect on this year, go over your planner, see how much you did, what new things you tried, and how much you have grown and changed!

Let’s talk about how you want to grow in your business, in your unique gifting and in the impact you can have on others. Imagine if you could help them to get results faster?  

As you think about 2023 I want you to consider helping your clients even more than you do already!  

Listen in to hear about The Paper Solution® Certification. If this is something that has been on your mind or in your heart to do next year - schedule a call with Monique Horb (MHorb@organize365.com) to learn more!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: End_of_the_Year_Business_Tax_Prep__2023_Certification_Dates.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

In part two of this three part Ready, Set, Go series, we are going to discuss the middle child of the Ready, Set, Go family - SET. What does it mean to get SET and to be SET?

The running joke for visionary entrepreneurs like myself is the quote, “Ready, Fire, Aim!”

And boy have I lived that quote in the past! At first, in my 20s, it was because I didn’t know what I was doing - at home, at work, or as a parent. I learned the hard way - every time!

But later in my 30s, it wasn’t really my fault anymore. There wasn’t enough time to prepare or aim. Life was moving so fast that I was missing important things while running at Mach 1 speed!

It wasn’t my fault. And it’s not yours either.

The last time we had “preparation time” in our calendars was in grade school where our teachers carefully planned our assignments and workload so we had time to complete things.

By the time high school arrived: extra-curricular activities, part-time jobs and sleep filled in all the cracks and then some.

No one has enough time. And no one is going to give us more time. #truth

Work colleagues, parents, children, partners, neighbors and friends all want our time. Some demand, some plead, some expect it without question. And we give it…gladly, lovingly, freely.

We get up earlier, stay up later, eliminate hobbies and rearrange our days.

Eve Rodsky compares our time this way, “Men’s time is worth diamonds, and women’s time is like sand.”

Ouch. You can’t unhear that. But, it’s true for me.

Greg has a golf night. He goes on fishing and golf trips. I haven’t had a hobby night or gone on a trip with friends since having children (22 years ago)!

After work, Greg makes dinner and then watches TV. Now, I do the dishes (sometimes), take a bath and do a puzzle. But I feel weird about it.

Until a few years ago, my after-work activities involved driving kids, cleaning the kitchen, laundry, straightening up, etc. until I felt it was an acceptable time for me to stop “working” and take my bath.

When are we going to give ourselves the permission to take back a little of our time?

Last week we talked about being ready. The truth is you and I are OVER ready. We have been for decades. But we don’t make the plan and run the race to a different end. Why is this?

SET is all about saying your time is not more important, but AS important as everyone else’s.

For me, in this season, it means I am going to start my Ph.D program and travel - A LOT. For work, for pleasure, and for me.

Let me be clear. My family is not happy about it. They intellectually support it, but in words and actions, they are not pleased with the change.

Am I being selfish? Maybe.

Would I want it for every single one of them? Absolutely! When one of my family members wants to…further their education, move out, have a baby, take a trip, find a new doctor, pursue a new passion…I facilitate the how, when, where, and payments.

I am happy for the sacrifices of time and self-focus I have devoted to my family over the last 25 years, and for the ability to grow Organize 365® around my family.

But now I want to pour more of my time and talent into my unique gifting.

So, how do we get SET to do the things we want and need to do in life?

We know how to help others in our lives get set. We set our kids up for school, set-up their school supplies, bookbags, dorm rooms, etc. We set our partners up for their endeavors and trips. We know how to get set-up; we just don't often look at doing it for ourselves the way we do for others.

How do we SET ourselves up for success?

Getting SET comes after getting ready because when you are getting SET you are already ready. You are doing the final steps before you GO (more on that next week).

What do you need to GO? Get that together now.

How can you get SET for a productive and proactive new year?

If your goal is to reclaim your home and your time - I have the solution for you. The Productive Home Solution™ is a new way of thinking about your space and time! Half of the battle with anything we are ready and set to do is deciding what the next step is (and then the next step after that). Avoid decision fatigue and use The Productive Home Solution™ as your roadmap to guide you through the journey of getting organized. Organization will carry you through so many of your goals and was the first step for me getting to where I am today.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: 516_-_Set...Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU learn the skill of organization, too!

Amber N. shared her transformation with me! She’s the mom of two children who are a senior in high school and 14 years old, and she has a Greg of her own! Amber had always been inspired to be organized; but at some point life just got in her way.  She was no longer organized but desperately wanted to be. Amber had tried other organization systems, including hiring a professional organizer.  The funny part is, once she got through some of the Organize 365® resources, she no longer needed that professional organizer to come back in for a “refresh”.  She had learned the skill of organization and now she can do it on her own! I keep telling you, organization is a learnable skill people!

Amber had to come to terms with what “being organized” actually means.  Did it mean mimicking the pictures from Pinterest; or was it more important for it to be done? Picture vs. Reality. Cute vs. Organized. We put so much pressure on ourselves to give our children these picture perfect parties or bedrooms. Honestly, our kids aren’t on social media and do not see the pictures we see. They are not on Pinterest. They are not looking for these tiny details. They are just happy to spend time with us, and to celebrate their birthday. Give yourself some grace. 

Amber had to start with baby steps…but ultimately she ended in a sprint.  She started with her mail and the Sunday Basket® despite all the paper in her house.  She was so excited with the results that she wanted more and wanted it more quickly. Now she’s The Paper Solution Certified and can help people on their own organizational journeys!

I encourage everyone to evaluate what your energy level is during each season, and what area you want to focus on - such as the house, school & work, or maybe it’s being a more intentional mom. Then set the expectation at the beginning that ‘something is better than nothing’ when it comes to getting organized. 

Amber has learned so much from Organize 365®.  Her major takeaway is to extend herself grace. Her other biggest takeaways are: 

  • If you put a process in place, you can move through it
  • Good is good enough and focus on macro not micro
  • Don’t get bogged down

Now that she is organized, she has time to spend with her family and on her business too. She also has more money because she isn’t paying late fees and more grace that she gives to herself!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Transformation_with_Amber_N._Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Are you READY to think differently? Are you READY to evaluate your past new years goals and productivity? Are you READY to put in the work and reap the rewards of your focus & labor? Are you physically READY? Mentally READY? Emotionally READY?

 

Today’s episode is about readiness. And I’m so excited to share my ideas for what it means to be READY.

 

My favorite activity is to think about my thinking. It is a habit that I have cultivated into an art form and can no longer do without. It’s my habit.

 

And that is the thing about habits. Bad ones are easy to fall into and hard to break. Good ones take thought, planning, discipline and determination to establish.

 

Yet, habits are the ONE thing that separates the life you have today and the future you envision for yourself.

 

  • You cannot fall into productivity (it doesn't just happen)
  • Your house will not magically clean and organize itself

 

As I get ready for the new year, I want to share with you how I think about this coming season. As the December days quickly pass by, I look forward to the new year. This is the official day I start running my race for a productive 2023 - when new opportunities like starting college for my Ph.D program begin.

 

I am getting ahead of myself. Today. Today is about being READY.

 

Readiness is a state of being.

 

You will never be 100% ready. And that's 100% okay! You don't have to be 100% ready in order to start!

 

Readiness is an understanding of the strengths and limitations you are experiencing in THIS phase of your life.

 

What unique seasons are you experiencing right now that you can leverage to move forward in your home organization goals?

 

  • Are you in a season where you are home more?
  • Do you have more energy at a certain time of day, or day of the week?
  • Is there a big event coming up that will motivate you to work faster?
  • Do you have a companion who is motivated to pace with you?
  • Is this a season where you have money in the budget to add to your efforts?
  • Would selling unused past purchases help you fund your new years goals? 

 

You may not be in a season where you are READY to devote more time and energy to your personal home. And that is OK.

 

However, what I have found to be true more often is that there is always a seed of readiness in each season, but we miss it.

 

I mentioned that I think about my thinking - constantly. I love sharing my unique thinking with you - to motivate you to do the same! Think about where you are right now and what you are ready for!

 

Change is normal. Most people spend their whole life trying to avoid change.

 

But change is where transformation comes from. Change unlocks the future. And it starts with READINESS.

  • READINESS is fragile
  • READINESS is fleeting
  • READINESS holds all the potential for the future

 

Next week I will share with you my thoughts on SET, but this week focus on your READINESS. READINESS is the first step in your new year. Don't miss it!

 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

 

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: 515_-_Ready....mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

Today I am so excited for you to meet Maura. Over the summer I put out a social media post requesting a family that would allow me to get their kid’s rooms organized and FILM IT ALL for a movie about Kids Organization. Maura was jumping up and down saying “pick me”!

Maura is a mom of four - Bode (12), Lucy Belle (10), Finley (7) and Blaise (4). She runs a bakery out of her house (oh my goodness - she makes the BEST cookies) and her husband also works from home. 

As Maura put it, “the spigot never stops.” Which leads us to talking about OVERWHELM as a parent. The overwhelm is beautiful and messy all at the same time. And I’m so glad I was welcomed into Maura’s house to put into action the principles of Organize 365®’s Kids Program.

I LOVE ORGANIZING CHILDREN. I LOVE IT.

I was able to come one day early, meet these kiddos, and look at the task ahead of me.  I spent a total of 2-3 hours with each child individually and we focused on the oldest three. 

We are all looking for ways to connect with and spend quality time with our children. Did you know that time spent teaching kids the skills of organization while organizing their room with them can be the BEST quality time? 

Get the kids involved! Working with your kid to organize their room is quality time you can spend with them. They love the one on one time. They love talking about their stuff. They love getting to make decisions. They love the result and the process. You are teaching them the valuable skill of organizing while spending time with them.

Make it an enjoyable process for both of you! Listen to their stories. Everything in their room has a story for them. These are their little treasures!

Now when Maura tucks her kids in at night, she can actually go into their rooms and not get filled with so much frustration over the mess. Listen for the update since my visit. 

I can’t come to everyone’s house but trust me - you can do this!  The Organize 365® Kids Program is like I am there with you and we go through all the areas.  Harness your kids excitement to your benefit

NOW is just as good a time as any.  Since the kids are out of school and there’s anticipation building for the holidays…declutter and organize.  Make room for all the new stuff that will be coming into your home. I also shared some tips you may want to use for other ideal times that you want to declutter and organize.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

Direct download: Organize_365_Reality__KIDS_TV_Show_with_Maura_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

“In today’s podcast, I’m channeling my 30-something self. 

Once school let out for the holiday break, any shred of productivity or sanity that I was going to have for the last 10 days of the year were out the window and I was back to being camp counselor again.

If you are in your active parenting years, this podcast is a HUGE HUG from me. It’s all going to be alright. You’re going to be fine. Everyone is going to love everything that they get, everyone is going to appreciate the work that you are doing, all the invisible tasks are going to be well-rewarded. YOU ARE DOING A GREAT!

If your primary role and responsibility right now is raising humans…that is not a job. It’s a life’s calling. It is your legacy. It is your life. It is all consuming. I’ve been there. I’ve done it. 

I know you feel like you never have any time. And you may tell yourself that you will get organized when you have more time. But, the truth is...people in their 30’s are the BEST at getting organized. Because you need it SO much more. 

 

Learning the skill of organizing is not optional. If you opt-out, meaning you don’t want to learn the skill of organizing, then everything is going to be harder for you. Organization skills is where ease, capacity, time and sanity comes from! It is an essential skill.

The Organize 365® Year End Bundle includes the three essential things you are going to need in order to get optimally organized in 2023. This will ensure your whole entire life is organized so you can move even faster.

I know what you want…

  • More impact
  • More capacity
  • Do more. Be more places

You really don’t have to pick and choose. You need to be everywhere and doing everything in your 20s-40s.

You need to learn the skill of organizing AND your children need to learn the skill of organizing.

So here’s what we’ve put together for you:

  1. The Productive Home Solution™
  2. The Kids Program - like The Productive Home Solution™ for your kids
  3. The Sunday Basket® System

If you are wanting to get your WHOLE family organized; from the dog all the way to mom and dad, then listen to the end because we have a big event planned to help you AND your family

Direct download: Limited_Time_Family_Organization_Year_End_Bundle_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

show notes

Direct download: 514_-_The_Productive_Home_Solution_with_Tanya_Blackburn.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU learn the skill of organization, too!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Ashley C. She lives with husband, three children and some fun pets! She shares her struggle with living up to the Pinterest perfect bar she set for herself when she had her first baby.  

Ashley has been a dedicated podcast listener for years.  The Organize 365® podcast gave her the permission to forgo the Pinterest perfect nursery rooms and scrapbooks and get things done a little less than perfect.  

We discuss how we have all these long to-do lists and so much pressure on ourselves but the funny thing is, no one is checking that list.  No one is disappointed that we didn’t accomplish something or accomplish it in the way we planned.  

Ashley is somewhat of a reformed perfectionist now.  In her business, she uses the phrase “experiments in imperfection.”  She joined The Productive Home Solution™ and got her new home organized. Only recently did she purchase the Sunday Basket®.  Why now?  Lisa helped her to unveil feelings of fear of failure. Ashley knew about all the resources Organize 365® has to offer but she subconsciously felt that maybe she wouldn’t do them justice. 

I encourage everyone to not sit on the sidelines due to fear of failure. Is it time for you to get off the sidelines and make the commitment with the Sunday Basket® system I am happy to say Ashley is organized and on her way to the next chapter of life. Her transformation story is ongoing as she is now working her way into business and just got started with the Friday Workbox®

EPISODE RESOURCES:

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Wednesday_Podcast_with_Ashley_C..mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Great News!  We have two new locations for 2023!!  I hope to see you there!

 

Learn more and sign-up for a live, in-person Paper Organizing Retreat.

 

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Coffee_Chat_2023_Paper_Orgnaization_Retreat_Locations.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

In today’s episode as we wrap up our series on my ADHD journey and exploration of executive functions, I am excited to introduce you to Keith Boswell, Vice President of Marketing at ADHD Online.

ADHD Online is transforming the diagnosis and treatment of people dealing with neurodiversity. Organize 365® and ADHD Online have partnered several times over the past year to present organizational solutions that I have found to work for others struggling with ADHD.

Keith brings a new level to this conversation we’ve been having - he is open about his diagnosis of ADHD and his own organization challenges and triumphs. We talk about his familys’ problem areas, the progression of aging children, and roles that will come with the organization of their house.

Find out how we met and how our partnership is evolving. Keith and ADHD Online are doing some important work for awareness and helping people function with ADHD. They are helping people to get a faster diagnosis and move on to finding solutions.  ADHD Online has medical professionals providing the diagnosis and from there you can choose to work with them or your primary doctors and pharmacies. And, they are proud to say that the solution is not always medicine!  They really work with their clients to help them succeed. Organize 365® is  excited to work with them to provide solutions that work for helping their clients live a more organized and proactive life.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: 513_-_Keith_Boswell_from_ADHD_Online.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

In today’s episode we wrap up our four part series on exploring the executive functions and the role they play in our ability to be organized. I’ve always believed that you won’t just “be organized.” Organization is a learnable skill. This means that it’s not something you have to be born with. If you’re currently not organized, that's okay too! You can absolutely learn how to be organized.

I have always had a strong belief that organization is a learnable skill. So, I wasn’t surprised to learn that 87% of Americans also believe that organization is a learnable skill. However, I was surprised to find that of those same Americans - only 18% believed that they are organized. Organize 365® courses and programs teach you how to be organized. If you struggle with initiating and task monitoring, then you need community. That’s why adding the Organize 365® Community App was important to me.

Initiation is simply the “start” factor. Task Monitoring is the ability to look at how far you have come and understand how much still needs to be accomplished.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Listen to today’s episode to learn how community and grace play a huge role in helping you learn a new skill (like organizing).

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: 512_-__What_is_the_Executive_Function_of_Initating_and_Task_Monitoring.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

As we continue our series exploring executive functions today we get to talk about planning.

Can you hear it in my voice? Planning is my FAVORITE-IST thing!

Planning is so much more than filling in a planner or checking boxes. Planning is purposefully setting aside time and deciding how you want to show up in the next season. Decide what rules you want to make for your next season so you can be as proactive as you want to be. It’s time to dream about what is possible, about what you want to change, and about what you don’t want to change. 

At Organize 365®, I offer LIVE Planning Days for home and work where I teach you how to proactively plan. They are conveniently scheduled around natural Golden Windows.

Golden windows is a phrase I created to help articulate different times that are optimal for getting started on your transformational journey to organizing. Learn more about golden windows in podcast 242 - Golden Windows of Organizing Opportunity.

You do realize, without knowing it, there are about three times a year we shift in life?  These are what I like to call Golden Windows.  This is a time to organize and plan.  Effective planning going into these golden windows can have a profound impact on your organizational transformation because your organizing energy is naturally higher than normal. And with a plan in hand you can really capitalize on that energy. 

Planning is everything! Planning will help you make the invisible work visible. See how I’ve applied this to so many seemingly “invisible” tasks in life such as putting up and taking down my Christmas tree.

There are a lot of layers to this conversation - listen to the full episode and join me for the next part of this executive function series where we will be talking about initiation & task monitoring.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Ep._511_-_What_is_the_Executive_Function_of_Planning.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Today’s coffee chat is a special Holiday Blitz Edition. Every year I host my annual FREE Holiday Blitz. The goal of the Holiday Blitz is to help you strategically plan for your holiday season by making the invisible work of the holidays visible. The Holiday Blitz includes 13 free downloadable planning pages and 5 course videos where I walk you through planning the holiday season. We talk about how you can simplify your holidays, embrace your uniqueness and be present, proactive and productive throughout the season.

 

Listen in as I interview busy CEO and mom Jessica Evans of Ultimate Bundles. Jessica shares with us how she used the Holiday Blitz to plan out her holiday traditions. Find out what traditions she loves, which ones she doesn’t enjoy as much and how she is setting herself up for success this holiday season. Jessica also shares some really fun holiday ideas!

 

Do you want to plan your holiday season with The Holiday Blitz? There’s still time! Join the Holiday Blitz On Demand now.

 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

 

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Ultimate_Bundle_Coffee_Chat.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Does it ever feel like you have a two year old in your brain talking to you all day reminding you of things you need to do and demanding what to do next?  Do you feel like you are playing an adult version of Memory or Go Fish when it comes to your paperwork? 

Now that I've learned that I have ADHD, I'm ready to dive deeper into this topic of executive function and organization with formal research. Lots of times ADHD can be diagnosed when the person’s executive functions are analyzed. In this episode I explain the Executive Function of the Organization of Materials.

Did you know most people organize their closets and kitchens first?  Why do you think that is? Listen to the full episode to understand.

At Organize 365®, I have designed systems with enough structure to get the job done and with a little wiggle room for customization, because we’re all unique. Here are the rules to keep you on track…

  1. Everything should have a place. True - but you (not Pinterest, not society - you) get to pick that place.
  2. We tend to reorganize about every twenty years due to stages of life and unexpected life events. This is totally NORMAL!
  3. Maintain what is working for you. You only need to implement systems for what is unorganized.
  4. Organization of Materials has an order (think stages of life)
  5. Organization of Materials is about personal rules you create to maintain sustainable organization. 

Through learning the skill of functional organization; you will literally unlock your time and be able to spend it doing what you are uniquely created to do.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!


What's next for research at Organize 365®? Now that I've learned that I have ADHD, I'm ready to dive deeper into this topic of executive function and organization with formal research.

Lots of times ADHD can be diagnosed when the person’s executive functions are analyzed. 

In this episode, I shared three examples of me relying on my working memory.  I analyze if my working memory helped or hindered the situation and explore explanations as to why I responded, the way I did, in each situation.  

The executive function of working memory holds information in your head for a short amount of time so you can manipulate that information and do something.  Example: A math problem.  You take in the information of the numbers and functions that are being requested. When you do the problem in your head you are using your working memory to solve the problem.

All hope is not lost - yes we can improve our executive functions according to Psychology today.  They suggest to identify which executive function you want to improve and then pick a strategy to help you improve.

Strategies to improve your executive functions include:

  1. Chunk things into smaller tasks
  2. Externalize information using notepads, to do lists, or reminders 

(had you completed the math problem, mentioned earlier, on paper, you would be helping your working memory by reducing demand upon your working memory so it is available for other items you need to remember)

  1. Buddy up with a peer to foster accountability
  2. Blocking access to distractions such as your phone in a drawer while focusing on a task
  3. Use rewards to motivate periods of consistent effort

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: 509_What_is_the_Executive_Function_of_Working_Memory.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:00am EDT

What's next for research at Organize 365®? Now that I've learned that I have ADHD, I'm ready to dive deeper into this topic of executive function and organization with formal research.

There are five areas of executive function that involve organization:

  1. Initiating - getting started
  2. Working Memory - holding information
  3. Planning - planning ahead
  4. Monitoring - knowing what needs to be done next
  5. Organizing Materials - organizing your home

I believe that you can impact and change your executive functioning by learning the skill of organization so you can have more time to do what you're uniquely created to do. At Organize 365® we have programs, systems, and products to help you in each of these areas.

In this episode, I explain where I am going next and the massive decision that I have made in order to take the next step. I've talked about doing it for years, but finally, in January of 2023, I will begin a one-year program that will lead me into a Ph.D. program.

No one else will do this research for me. If we are going to take on this project as a company, I want to be the one not just leading the team, but leading the research. To do that, I have to have a Ph.D.

I've already been rearranging my schedule and preparing myself, my family, and my team for what this will look like. I'm dividing my week into three parts so my family, my company, and my studies all get the attention they need.

Come along with me on the journey!

 

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-508.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

This week, I want to let you know that there will not be any Wednesday Transformations in November. I had some scheduling conflicts and was not able to record any new interviews for you. Wednesday Transformations will return on December 7.

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365 community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-W-2022-10-26.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

Do I have ADHD or not? This has become so confusing!

According to ADHD Online, I have a medical diagnosis of ADHD. According to Barbara Hunter's analysis of my BRIEF-A assessment, my executive functioning indicates that I do NOT have ADHD. Who is right?

I took my questions to a psychologist in Cincinnati for a final answer.

Why? Well, first, I want to give good recommendations to the Organize 365® community. If ADHD Online is not a good resource, I don't want to refer you to them. Second, I want to continue to do executive function research related to ADHD and organization, so I want to know if I actually have ADHD or not as I go into that project.

Organization is a learnable skill. If we learn the skill of organizing, can we mitigate or eliminate the effects of ADHD?

In this episode, I share with you my story of gathering supporting information from my childhood, taking additional assessments, and speaking with the psychologist to get the final answer. I explain the criteria for an ADHD diagnosis. I also share how in the process, we determined first that I do NOT have dyslexia as I have always been told.

Two interesting things were the clinchers for my final answer. One was speeding tickets, and the other was how I handle money and debt.

Listen to this episode to hear how in the beginning, the psychologist believed there was no way that I could have ADHD and how this all came together to finally find out if I do have ADHD.

More Resources

 

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-507.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Carrie F. She lives with her husband and they have two teens at home and one away at college. She's a retired veterinarian. Paper was her greatest organizational struggle at home, especially after closing her practice. We talk about how she overcame her piles of paper by pressing through, starting with the current paper, and then working her way back through the rest of the paper.

Is paper your nemesis? The Sunday Basket® System is the first step to getting your paper organized!

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365 community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-CarrieF.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

This month I've been exploring the topic of ADHD and more specifically, discovering if I have ADHD.

Last week, I shared my journey to reach the point of deciding to be tested for ADHD. First I took the assessment from ADHD Online and was told that I DO have a medical ADHD diagnosis.

In this episode, I'm talking with my friend Barbara Hunter about whether she thinks I have ADHD... or not. She gave me The BRIEF-A to make her determination. This is the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function® Adult Version.

The BRIEF-A is given in three parts: I took the assessment. Then both my husband, Greg, and my chief of staff, Stephanie, took the assessment to give their perspective on me.

Barbara walked through the sections of the test with me to explain what the various sections mean and my results compared to Greg and Stephanie's opinions of me, as well as ways to improve my executive functioning in some areas.

The final result? According to The BRIEF-A, Barbara says that this current assessment of my executive function says that I do NOT have ADHD.

So, where do I go from here? I contacted a doctor in the Cincinnati area to do more testing so I can definitively find out if I have ADHD or not. More to come!

Looking for more information on ADHD and Organization? Start with my book, How ADHD Affects Home Organization. It's available for free as an audiobook on the ADHD Playlist!

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-506.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Kat S. She lives with her husband and together they run her music studio out of their home. Kat feels like she learned to be organized at a young age because her mom had hoarding tendencies, but she has learned so much more since implementing Organize 365® systems. She and her husband trend to the minimalist side and have great systems in place for living and working together.

Kat was able to bring her husband home to work in her business in part because she was able to show him using her Business Friday Workbox® and her stack of pink slash pockets all of the ideas that she had for her business that she needed help to bring to life.

What's in your pink slash pockets?

Visit Kat's website at KatStarrMusic.com.

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365 community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-KatS.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

Do I have ADHD? My mom doesn't think I have ADHD. I didn't think I had ADHD. At one point, I adamantly opposed people who suggested I had ADHD.

But, in more recent years, I have thought: Maybe I do have ADHD?

When I would organize women in the Cincinnati area, many would start their appointments by telling me that they had or thought they had ADHD. My kids received their ADHD diagnoses when they were children and attended Springer School and Center for many years. I was a teacher and I saw many kids receive their ADHD diagnosis and the support put in place for them.

My book How ADHD Affects Home Organization came out of this time of discovery and research about ADHD and research about organization. (By the way, you can now get the audiobook for free on our new Organize 365® ADHD Playlist!)

People who have ADHD need more structure and support. It's not an issue of intellect. It's an issue of executive functioning. Everyone learns at a different pace and organization is a learnable skill. It's just that people who have ADHD tend to need a person to help put structure in place for them to learn the skill of organizing.

In this episode, I fill you in on my journey of learning about ADHD and then coming to the point of deciding to find out if I actually have ADHD... or not.

Many things came together recently for me to reach this point personally. I have done some biohacking with my Oura Ring and Apple Watch. I began a partnership and series of webinars with ADHD Online and learned more about their services.

But, it was my recent meeting with Barbara Hunter that pushed me over the edge. She was at Springer School and Center for over 20 years. I took any class they offered as my kids were students there. They often bring in top-notch experts in conjunction with Cincinnati Children's Hospital. Barbara is now doing executive function coaching through her company Integrated Learning Designs. In this meeting, we were discussing how there are many resources for students and employees with ADHD, but no one is really addressing how ADHD affects your home life.

So, then, I pondered out loud whether I actually have ADHD or not. Do I really want to know? What would it change if I knew? I wouldn't medicate for ADHD at this point in my life if I have a diagnosis because I have skills and systems already in place to make my life run smoothly. What would knowing that I have or do not have ADHD do for me? What I really want to know is my level of executive functioning and how to optimize that, whether I have ADHD or not!

Barbara tells me there's a test for that! It's called The BRIEF-A. I was in! Just in our casual conversation, Barbara saw signs in me that pointed towards an ADHD diagnosis. And I saw more signs. I always had a floating "C" in school, I'm a talker, I interrupt people, I'm a busybody who doesn't vacation well, and I can't sit to watch TV without a puzzle to work on or laundry to fold. So, I made arrangements to take the test with Barbara.

Before that, still unsure of if I really wanted to know the answer, I decided with some trepidation and some encouragement from Joey to first take the test from ADHD Online to see what they had to say.

The results? According to ADHD Online and their assessment, I have ADHD.

Next week, I talk about my results from The BRIEF-A and my meeting with Barbara Hunter. What does Barbara have to say about my executive functioning based on The BRIEF-A?

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-505.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Jennifer S. She lives with her husband and three kids, two of whom are off to college. Jennifer is an attorney and has always worked full-time outside of the home. We have a great discussion about wills, trusts, power of attorney for your adult children, inventories, caring for aging parents, and so much more. Jennifer shares how the Sunday Basket® kept her life running in a hard season while caring for her grandmother at the end of her life and her own aging parents.

Jennifer loves Planning Days for both home and business but needed a little extra help. She gives a thank you to Stefanie at Island Organizing for her services related to the Business Friday Workbox® organization and the community she's found there.

Jennifer, like many of us, tends to be a perfectionist. She's learning to say, "I am a person of excellence!" How are you pursuing excellence?

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365 community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-JenniferS.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

In over a decade of studying female heads of households in their homes and researching what it takes to get them organized, I've thought a lot about time and the invisible work we are doing.

The big thing when I started my business was hitting six figures. Everyone wanted to hit $100,000 in yearly income. Back then, I had just quit my teaching job in a private school making $24,000 a year in take-home pay. I couldn't even wrap my mind around ever being a six-figure income earner!

Over the years, as I've looked at how women use their time, I've come to this conclusion: You can have six-figure time without the six-figure income. It's all about mindset and how you choose to spend your time. In this episode, I share my observations of six-figure income earners and my suggestions for developing a six-figure time mindset.

How Six-Figure Income Earners Spend Their Time

As a professional organizer, I went into the homes of many six-figure earners with million-dollar homes. These were often doctors, lawyers, business owners, and C-Suite executives. I had the opportunity to see how they run their lives and the type of help they hired. Having a six-figure income gave these women and their families a choice in how they spend their time.

Can you have this six-figure time mindset without the six-figure income? I think you can! Many millionaires are time-poor while many who have no income at all are time rich. What's the difference between time poverty and being rich in time?

Time Passing vs Making a Difference

Most people see time in terms of how much time is passing and what they can get done. Truly productive people see a third dimension: If I spend my time doing this today, will it make a difference in the future? Will it make a difference a month, a year, 5 years, or 10 years from now? People who are time multipliers always make their time decisions based on the significance factor.

If you could get the to-do list done, what would you do with your free time? Too many of us just add more to-do items to the list. 

I think we most want time freedom. To reach that goal, you must be proactive and not reactive. I talk about this all the time at Organize 365®. This is not a new concept. But, this is more than just planning out the big projects. You have to develop the habit muscle of proactivity in every area of your life.

It means not doing every little thing when you have the thought. You write the thought on the index card, drop it into the Sunday Basket®, and do those little things all batched together to save time.

Six-figure time takes being proactive a step further. Instead of waiting to have the thought about the dog's medicine or the bills that need to be paid, you put it on a schedule with a plan for how to get it done or create other automations for the task like using bill pay. You purposely plan ahead for how the task will be done. What in your life can be systematized, scheduled, and automated to save you time and mental space?

Forward Thinking and Planning Days

Everyone is a forward thinker according to Ben Hardy. The difference is how far ahead into the future you think. It's great to have 15 minutes of free time and do something that your future self will appreciate like emptying the dishwasher or starting the laundry, but this is reactive productivity. How do you move to the next step and think farther into the future?

The answer is planning days.

Planning days for your home and your work give you the focused time to get more done and have more impact. The goal isn't a longer to-do list. The goal is more time to do what you're uniquely created to do so you can have more impact.

I'll be honest: It's more comfortable to add to the to-do list and check off the low-level tasks because it makes me feel productive. It takes time to wrestle with the question of what you're uniquely created to do and to try things out to see if that's the right thing for you. It takes time to develop skills and practice those skills. Six-figure income earners spend a lot of time growing their skills. 

Six-figure income earners also spend a lot of time networking and making connections with like-minded people. Surround yourself with people who are investing their time and resources into being more productive so they can have an impact on the world.

They also change their role as they grow. Six-figure income earners do the things that are the highest use of their time. You have to focus on working your way out of jobs. This might mean delegating jobs to other people or services that can do the work for you. This might be other family members. Consider meal planning services or hire a house cleaner. It might also mean changing the standard at which you do a task in your home. Can you lengthen the time between dusting or changing your sheets?

Building Relationships

I think that the true freedom of six-figure time comes when you can start to think about not just the work that needs to be done at home or in the office, but how you can impact relationships in your family, friends, and work. This is harder to prioritize because no one is holding us accountable. 

Using the Sunday Basket® for Six-Figure Time

The Sunday Basket® System is the first step in developing a six-figure time mindset. It helps you think about and systematize your personal life, household, family, and finances. I teach you how to move from being reactive to proactive.

Now, based on this podcast you can take your thinking to the next level. When you focus on your Sunday Basket® color of the week, consider the chess level next steps. What can you do for yourself, your household, your family, or your finances that would save you time and give you time freedom for the future?

I encourage you to pay special attention to how you invest your time with your family because these are the types of things that never make the to-do list and we fail to think about them until it's too late. I've shared many times about how I spent purposeful time with my kids in their teens to develop the close relationships that I have with them now. 

Here's a simple way to be productive in your home instead of reactive and make time for family and relationship-building this holiday season: Join our holiday blitz! Get on the wait list for the 2022 Holiday Blitz now!

Being a six-figure time person means seeing how valuable your time is and how valuable you are. Invest your time wisely!

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-504.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

On Wednesdays, I normally get to talk with members of the Organize 365® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action.

For the rest of this month, I have a treat for you on the Wednesday Transformation episodes I want to share with you some of the extraordinary breakthroughs from women just like you who attended Embrace 2022. Listen in for Part 3 of the transformations!

Embrace is now available on demand! You can learn more about the Embrace Self-Guided Retreat here.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-Embrace2022-Part3.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

There are four types of work that we all do at home. In this episode, I go through these four types of work in detail and discuss how to reduce the amount of time spent on the first three so you can do more unique purpose work.

Housework

We've talked a lot over the last couple of years about housework. As a part of our Organize 365® Research, I have honed in on and defined this type of work. There are three main types of housework: cleaning, tasks of daily living, and organization. You must clean your home to some standard you set, do all the tasks that make you a human, like showering and brushing your teeth, plus the things in your house must have a home. Housework is like a part-time job of 18-25 hours each week for the average household without children!

Listen to these episodes for more about how I define housework:

Invisible Work

This is the work that happens in your Sunday Basket®. I talked about this with Eve Rodsky. Invisible work is the mental load and related tasks to running a household. These are things like paying the bills and planning for holidays. This type of work doesn't fit into the housework category and we have a hard time labeling and quantifying it.

The Sunday Basket® System helps with invisible work. The first six weeks of setup and habit-building can take a lot of time because you're setting up systems and processes. You have a set time to handle all these little one-off or recurring tasks. It might take you 90 minutes to 3 hours in the beginning, but then something magical happens. The time savings (and lightened mental load) that you experience during the week is exponential. The average Sunday Basket® user saves 5 hours each week!

There is a second type of invisible work: emergency invisible work. Illnesses, scheduled changes, and childcare/adult care fall into this category. When you or someone else gets sick in your family, the world around you doesn't stop and wait for you. The regular work doesn't go away and the emergency itself often creates more work. There are also schedule changes that are really just a part of life and we have to just roll with them. Not everyone has the final category, but childcare and caregiving for adults is a full-time 24/7 job all on its own. 

Hobby Work

Angela Watson and I talked a lot about hobby work earlier this summer in relation to teachers. We naturally fill our time with work, but it's not all essential work. Sometimes, we do extra work to make ourselves feel better or make something look the way we want. That's hobby work. This often involves trying to be perfect or redoing work. When I talked to Jacqui, she called this overwork. Whatever you call it, it is robbing you of your free time! This is refolding the clothes in the drawer, matching the socks, folding the underwear, micro-organizing the toys, and over-cleaning.

Unique Purpose Work

The female head of household struggles the most to prioritize unique purpose work over all other work. Unique purpose work is the work that you're uniquely created to do. No one else can do this work except you. But, too many of us feel that we must have an "A" in the first three areas before we can move into unique purpose work. Your family will push back. Your internal thoughts will push back. It's easier to search the internet for a fun printable about cleaning and press into hobby work. The reality is this: The pain of not doing what you're uniquely created to do must become greater than the pain of continuing to prioritize housework, invisible work, and hobby work for you to choose to prioritize your unique purpose work. 

How Do I Find What I'm Uniquely Created to Do?

I'm asked all of the time: How do I find what I'm uniquely created to do?

First, I suggest that you go through the Embrace Self-Guided Retreat. We've set it up as an on-demand experience that you can do alone or make a weekend of it with friends. The sessions will help you focus on yourself and show you how to begin to dream again. 

Second, you need to understand that finding your unique purpose takes time. I told you when we talked about passive organizing that it takes 12-18 months of research before you get started on organizing. It's natural then that it will take just as much time and research to find what you're uniquely created to do. You need focused thinking time.

At Organize 365®, our mission is to help you get organized so you have the free time to do what you're uniquely created to do. Take your time back through organization! Find what you're uniquely created to do and press into it!

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-503.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

On Wednesdays, I normally get to talk with members of the Organize 365® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action.

For the rest of this month, I have a treat for you on the Wednesday Transformation episodes I want to share with you some of the extraordinary breakthroughs from women just like you who attended Embrace 2022. Listen in for Part 2 of the transformations!

Embrace is now available on demand! You can learn more about the Embrace Self-Guided Retreat here.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-Embrace2022-Part2.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

Marie Kondo is like the Atkins Diet of organizing. Yes, it's true. Let me explain.

Please understand that this is NOT an anti-Marie Kondo episode! I think Marie Kondo is awesome in so many ways. She's done so much to raise awareness for organizing and decluttering in the media and the general public. There are benefits to her method, but I do feel that the Marie Kondo method is not the best long-term solution for the average American woman or home.

Last week I kicked off this podcast series by talking about passive organizing. When you're in this information-gathering stage, your interest and initial motivation can be sparked by things like Marie Kondo's book or TV show. 

In this episode, I explain why Marie Kondo's organizational method is like the Atkins Diet of organizing. 

First, ultra-low-carb diets like the Atkins Diet can give you quick results. You can get really, really quick results using the Marie Kondo method. That quick win can give you the motivation that is needed to keep going in the beginning. The problem is that you have to get rid of nearly everything to get those results!

Americans (and Australians) in particular tend to have larger homes and more stuff in those homes. Japanese homes are usually much smaller and rooms are more often multifunctional. When an American woman uses the Marie Kondo method of organizing, there's a lot of pain and chaos that goes along with pulling everything out of a particular space. It's like the headache you get when you go through carb withdrawal.

Second, the Atkins Diet is very one-size-fits-all, as is the Marie Kondo Method. There are strict rules to follow without deviation to get those results. Marie Kondo's Method is very prescriptive, telling you exactly how you should have each area of your home.

Do you have paper? She says get rid of it all except a tiny folder. This doesn't work for the typical American because so many important documents must be kept and presented in paper format. My grandson, Grayson, is a toddler and he already has two pieces of paper that must be kept track of for the rest of his life: his birth certificate and his social security card. We are not and cannot be paperless in the United States at this point in time. There are too many variables in the American household, especially in terms of paper, making a one-size-fits-all approach difficult to follow.

Don't even get me started on books. Marie Kondo says to get rid of all of your books. I did it. I got rid of all of my books. And I regret it! I love books and bookshelves. I have a couple of custom bookshelves in my home and I want more. I have hundreds of books on Audible and I'm in the process of buying many of those again in paper format so I can highlight them and write in them. 

(Side note: I'm so used to thinking in terms of pink, purple, blue, and green work that I'm starting to highlight information in my books this way using our Organize 365® highlighters.)

Third, the Atkins Diet is very restrictive and not as filling. The Marie Kondo Method is very restrictive and not as fun. There is one way to follow her program. If you don't follow the program to the detail, you don't get an A. But, I want an A in organizing.

The problem is, I like stuff. I'm organized, but I like stuff. I don't have a ridiculous amount of stuff, like clothes, but my closet is far from being a capsule wardrobe. 

These types of prescriptive systems tell you exactly what the end should look like to be considered organized. Minimal. Rainbow ordered. What if you have 35 pieces in your wardrobe instead of 33? What if you kept your books instead of getting rid of them all? Then you didn't follow the method and you don't get an A. You're not organized. 

Lastly, most people cannot maintain the Atkins Diet for the rest of their lives. In a similar way, it is difficult to maintain organization like Marie Kondo. As soon as you stop following the prescriptive directions, the organization falls apart. It doesn't last. The Marie Kondo method of organizing gets you started, but it's not a sustainable way for most Americans to live.

Organization is a skill that must be learned.

You must know how and why you want to get organized. Your phase of life and the type of order that you want play a part. You need to practice making decisions that become rules and then habits for your life and home so that in the long term, you deal with less decision fatigue. 

Marie Kondo's method of tidying is a wonderful place to start your journey. You can make some great visible progress with her system, but if you are not naturally a minimalist, it is not a sustainable lifestyle. 

If you're like me and you like stuff (and are a bit of a rebel), it's time instead to focus on learning the skill of organization. Use the momentum of these quick-start methods to propel yourself into lifelong organization rather than endless cycles of decluttering and feelings of lack.

Here at Organize 365®, we're not about Pinterest-perfect organizing. Our focus is functional organizing. Learning the skill of organizing is a lifestyle change, not a quick-fix project. It requires a mental shift. It's about having what you need, those things having a home, and regularly putting everything back where it belongs.

The Productive Home Solution™ teaches you the skill of organization, guides you in developing systems, and learning to make decisions that become habits. I help you do the mental and the physical work. I show you how to make the invisible work visible. 

Are you ready to move from passive organizing and short-term solutions to actively learning the skill of organization?

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

Related Episodes

 

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-502.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

On Wednesdays, I normally get to talk with members of the Organize 365® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action.

For the rest of this month, I have a treat for you on the Wednesday Transformation episodes I want to share with you some of the extraordinary breakthroughs from women just like you who attended Embrace 2022. Listen in for Part 1 of the transformations!

Embrace is now available on demand! You can learn more about the Embrace Self-Guided Retreat here.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-Embrace2022-Part1.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

It's time to add a new term to our organizing glossary: passive organizing.  I've said for years that it really takes three years to get organized, but the first 12-18 months are not easily recognized in that process. The reason is that this first chunk of time is spent in passive organizing.

What is passive organizing? Passive organizing is the time period during which you're becoming aware that maybe organization could help you become more productive. Maybe organization could help you get back your time. You're thinking, you're researching, and you're listening. This is passive organization. The change is happening in your mind, in your emotions, in your heart, and in your beliefs.

Passive organizing is the "pink" work of organizing. This is the time frame when you're working on yourself. You haven't committed to organizing, but you're gathering information and working on your mindset. You're thinking about the when, the how, and the order. You're deciding who you want your teacher to be. 

In passive organizing, you're consuming exorbitant amounts of information. Sometimes, this can cause information overload and paralysis. You might struggle to take action because you see the best in all the options. 

Let's take a little rabbit trail. The Kolbe Assessment is a quantitative test that helps you determine how you think. Among other things, it tells you how you leverage these three areas of thinking and processing in order to complete a project:

  • How much do you need to research something before you can do it?
  • How much structure do you need before you can take action?
  • How much do you need to talk before taking action?

I am a "quick start." I spend the majority of my time talking about a project and then the active work portion of the project comes out really quickly at the end. I verbally process everything and I change my mind a lot. My team on the other hand tends to be much higher in research and/or structure.

An example of this is how I wrote the book How ADHD Affects Home Organization. I completed the writing of the book in a weekend, but I spent two years preparing to write the book and talking about it first!

How much research, structure, and talking do YOU need before you can take action on getting organized? 

The other obstacle to deciding to get started with organing is having a tipping point. You have to reach a point when the pain of continuing to live in the current state of life is greater than the pain of change and learning a new skill to get the result you want. You have to realize that organization is a learnable skill. 

Another tipping point is a golden window. These are big life events: a milestone birthday, a new baby, a new house, a new job, a loss, a health diagnosis, etc. Many times, multiple big events happen at the same time. These are seasons of opportunity. Disorganization leads to more disorganization, but when you seize the opportunity, these are major turning points.

I want to remind you that I was once where you are. Back in 2012, I quit my teaching job, I was overweight, I was depressed, and everything was falling apart around me. You can read my story in Organization is a Learnable Skill and listen to my depression story in episode #69. I was negative and pessimistic. You would not have wanted to be my friend back then. What you see of me now is the after picture!

You must also believe that you can get organized. You must make a decision that you are now going to live proactively instead of reactively. This is where you draw a line in the sand and step over it.

And one day, you will find yourself listening to an Organize 365® Podcast episode and you just get up and start organizing while you listen instead of just gathering information!

Are you ready to draw your line and get started on your organizing journey?

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

Related Episodes

 

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-501.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Loren S. She lives with her boyfriend and her 10 houseplants. Loren describes herself as a natural "piler" but implementing the Sunday Basket® System means that she now has fewer piles around her home. She and her boyfriend participated in the Adult Spring Break Blitz by cleaning out and reorganizing their linen closet together. Loren also introduced me to The Conqueror Challenge, which is an app that gamifies exercise.

I do some teaching in my conversation with Loren about how to manage her Sunday Basket®. We talk about having only 5 slash pockets in each color and how to manage an ideas slash pocket for each color.

Loren shares how she tried to DIY a Sunday Basket® for herself before committing and purchasing the Sunday Basket® System. She found the extra teaching you get with the Sunday Basket® System precisely what she needed to mentally grasp the system and be successful. Is it time for you to make the commitment and purchase the Sunday Basket® System?

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365 community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Related Episodes

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

 

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-LorenS.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

One of the most impactful books I've ever read is The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. This book taught me so much about consistency, well before Organize 365® was even an idea.

We've reached a major milestone with this episode here at Organize 365®. This episode is our 500th Friday podcast episode. This doesn't count the extra episodes we've done over the years with Wednesday Transformations, Coffee Chats, and more. Counting those would bring us to well over 700 episodes in total and you've downloaded these episodes over 16 million times as of July 2022.

Those numbers and that amount of content creation only come with consistency. In all these years, I've NEVER missed publishing a Friday episode!

I was in my late 20s or early 30s when first read The Slight Edge and it stuck with me. I didn't fully understand back then the impact of a habit over time. You don't see that until you look back later. I knew I had to find ways to unlock more time in my life. I dived deep into how organization could unlock more time for me. Now, with the creation and implementation of the Sunday Basket® System, YOU have collectively unlocked 3 million hours and counting in YOUR lives! Wow!

In this episode, I'm sharing quotes from The Slight Edge and things I learned from the book.

Here are some of my takeaways:

  • I had to see things in life not as being "to" me, but rather "for" me.
  • Consistency beats talent.
  • Most businesses take 10 years to really get started.
  • Things will take longer than you want, but you need to look at time differently. 
  • Stop looking for permission!
  • Podcasts that take breaks don't last.
  • I have higher self-standards now, but there are no "shoulds" and much more "grace" in my life.
  • Focus on what you can change.
  • Visionaries make people uncomfortable.
  • I'm odd. You probably are too.
  • There are fewer people to talk to as you move up.
  • You have to live more in your mind than in reality to see the next big thing happen.

It's time to stop filling your days with to-do lists and household tasks. Quit doing things that don't matter in the long term. Focus instead on being consistent in what WILL make a difference over time. Consistency beats talent, money, and pedigree every time.

I'd love to hear how you're using your extra time to do what you're uniquely created to do! Join me on a Wednesday Transformation episode, tag me on Instagram (@Organize365), or share your story in our community app.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

 

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-500.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Laurie R. She lives with her husband and three kids, including one with special needs. When Laurie lost her job in 2015, she looked for organizing podcasts to listen to and found Organize 365®. At the time she was frustrated because her 1800s-era home had no closets and everything felt cluttered. You might be surprised to learn that she actually tackled her paper management first! We talk about Swiss cheese organizing, how hiring a house cleaner is a form of accountability, and permission to let go of things.

Laurie also gave a great tip for creating a "jobs binder" to hold copies of professional licensure paperwork, performance reviews, and portfolio samples. 

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365 community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Related Episodes

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

 

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-LaurieR.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

Time to plan out the next quarter of your work? Learn more about the Friday Workbox® Planning Day in this orientation replay.

Watch the video version and download the syllabus here: https://organize365.com/orientation

Direct download: Org365-WBX-PlanningDay-Orientation.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:01am EDT

Time to your work? Learn more about the Friday Workbox® in this orientation replay.

Watch the video version and download the syllabus here: https://organize365.com/orientation

Direct download: Org365-WBX-Orientation.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

The Pareto Principle says that 80% of the fruit comes from 20% of the labor. I first learned about this principle when reading 80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More by Perry Marshall. This is not just a sales thing. It can be seen in nature, road traffic, and math. So, I started thinking about how this 80/20 principle applies to our homes and housework.

I know that perfection is not attainable. Instead, I've resolved to strive for excellence. What does it look like to be an excellent homemaker?

We tend to equate cleanliness with organization. We are looking for order but "cleaning" your house doesn't bring that order. 

In this episode, I share with you how I have employed the 80/20 principle in my house to bring it to excellence but not perfection while also giving me time to do what I'm uniquely created to do. (Spoiler alert: We're going to talk more next week about using that extra time!)

What do 80% and excellence look like for my floors, counters/flat surfaces, laundry, and straightening/tidying in my home?

What does it mean to get to 80% in your Sunday Basket® routine and The Productive Home Solution™? 

Read the full show notes here: https://organize365.com/podcast/effort-the-80-20-of-housework-not-all-housework-is-equal 

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

Related Episodes

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Direct download: Org365-499.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT